96 
[Assembly 
Some estimate of the value of these limestone beds may be formed 
from the fact that the blocks can be swung on board sloops by means of 
cranes without any land transport, and that each acre may be made to 
yield from 100,000 to 500,000 barrels of lime, or for shipment; each 
acre will on an average yield about 100,000 tons of stone suitable for 
burning. 
Limestone^ variegated and clouded, occurs one-fourth of a mile south 
or southeast of Annville, across the marsh from the village near the 
mouth of Peekskill creek. It may, perhaps, be used for a marble, but 
in places it is intermixed with mineral substances which might be an 
injury to it in polishing and sawing. Its thickness could not be ascer- 
tained, as it was mostly covered by the tertiary formation that forms 
the high steep banks of 60 to 100 feet deep. Its range is NNE and 
SSW, and its dip about 70° to the ESE. 
The same bed of limestone is again seen on the right bank of Peeks- 
kill creek, one-fourth of a mile above Blue-Rock Point. It is on land 
belonging to Gen. Van Courtland, and has been quarried to some extent. 
It is gray, bluish and variegated, in some places white, and makes good 
lime. Its range or strike is NNE, and its dip nearly vertical. On the 
west it is bounded by the talcose slate, and at the contact the rock is 
black, in some places glazed with anthracite, or a substance like it, and 
it is loaded with cubic crystals of iron pyrites. 
This limestone reappears near Gen. Van Courtland's mill, one mile 
north of the locality just mentioned. 
Limestone makes its appearance as knobs or hills, fifty to one hun- 
dred feet high, about two or three miles north of Annville, in the val- 
ley west of Gallows hill. 
Limestone w^as observed about one and a half miles south of Putnam 
Court-House, on the farm of a Mr. Townsend, at two old mine holes, 
where some have supposed that silver, and others that marble was the 
object of exploration. It is scarcely necessary to add that no traces of 
silver ore could be distinguished. Both these excavations are in a bed 
of limestone about thirty rods apart. The bed is narrow, perhaps twen- 
ty feet wide, and is bounded by gneiss on each side; the strata are high- 
ly inclined to the east-southeast. Brucite and some coccolite were ob- 
served in the limestone of the northwardly excavation. At the other 
locality the limestone is very white, coarse grained, and contains imper- 
fect crystals of phosphate of lime or green augite. 
