No. 50.] 
395 
of the same which have never before been presented ; since, par- 
ticularly in this part of our country the rocks of the Silurean System 
are better developed than any other ; while the means of studying them 
with guides have been entirely wanting. Thus the student, after weary 
months of labor, abandons the subject in despair, being unable to iden- 
tify the rocks or fossils with any system heretofore published, and hav- 
ing made too little progress to systematize the whole, distrusts what 
he does know, because it seems inapplicable to what he supposes the 
same rocks or their equivalents in another country. 
The descriptions of the counties are given in the order in which they 
were examined, it being more convenient to describe them separately 
than together, besides the facility for reference which it affords, 
STEUBEN, 
The topographical character of this county I have heretofore had oc^ 
casion to notice. On the level of the higher grounds, the surface is 
only moderately uneven, and except the ravines and water channels, 
presents a gently undulating or rolling appearance, being by no means the 
rough and broken country which has been represented or might be in- 
ferred from travelling along the main roads in the valleys, with the steep 
escarpments of the hills rising on either side. 
Nearly all the ravines and banks of streams in the northern part of 
the county exhibit the upper and lower Fucoidal groups, and they have 
already been described, as seen at Hammondsport and at Reading, in 
the eastern part of the county, also at Conhocton and Dansville. The 
middle and south are occupied by the Chemung group, which extends 
to the southeastern part, and thence into Pennsylvania, while in the 
more elevated lands of the west, this group is nearly or entirely limit- 
ed within the county, and is succeeded by reddish or chocolate colored 
shales, which approach the Old Red Sandstone. These shales in some 
places contain a few fossils, which may possibly identify them as be- 
longing to the Old Red system. 
In Conhocton, a mile south of Bloodscorner, rocks appear in the 
point of the hill, which divides the valleys towards Liberty aiid Dans- 
ville ; at this place they are sandstone and hard sandy shale, which 
crumbles but is not slaty. The layers of sandstone are used for pur- 
poses of building. The fossils found were a fev^' imperfect shells of 
Leptaena and crinoidal joints. From this plac<3, south to near Liberty 
