122 
ECONOMICAL MINERALOGY. 
It may not be unimportant to observe, that in the neighborhood of this boring, brine springs 
had been worked before the Christian era ; and that the above is the only locality of fossil salt 
which is known in France.* * * § 
In noticing the salt mines of Hallein, in Hungary, Beudant remarks : “We observed in the 
midst of these clays, beds of salt sufficiently large, grey or reddish, and containing in some 
places, pellets of argillaceous matter. We find especially fibrous gypsum, some veins of an¬ 
hydrite, and beds of a brown compact gypsum of a grey lustre and somewhat scaly fracture.”! 
The account given of the salt springs of Worcestershire, in England, by an accurate ob¬ 
server, Dr. Charles Hastings, applies in almost every important particular to the region around 
the Onondaga springs. This author remarks, as others have done, that “wherever rock salt is 
met with, sulphate of lime or gypsum seems to be very generally discovered in mixture with 
the earthy strata above it. In most parts of the world where these gypseous strata are found, 
marine shells are mixed with them; but this has not been discovered to be the case either in 
Cheshire or in this county.” 
Dr. Hastings gives the following section from the surface in the town of Droitwich : “First, 
a stratum of mould, three feet deep ; then a stratum of red marl forty feet deep, which abounds 
with water of a brackish nature. After that, a stratum of marl which extends for one hundred 
and thirty feet. In this marl there are no springs of water ; it is quite dry, but is penetrated 
with perpendicular veins of gypsum. At the distance of a hundred and thirty feet from the 
commencement of the gypsum in the marl, we come to the strong brine, which rushes up to 
the surface as soon as it is bored into. This.brine is ten feet deep, and the rock salt is under 
this river of brine.”! 
I have introduced these notices of particular localities of rock salt, rather than the general 
ones contained in geological treatises, because the facts can be the more easily applied to the 
case under examination. And it may be observed that the most prominent of these is the con¬ 
stant associations of gypsum with the rock salt formation.§ In this particular, the similarity 
of the formation around the Onondaga lake appears to me to be fully established. About a 
mile from Syracuse, on the railroad from that village to Split Rock quarry, is a conglomerate 
made up of pebbles of various sizes and colours, and firmly aggregated by an argillaceous ce¬ 
ment. This stratum is three or four feet in thickness, and continues for some distance. In 
the marsh about a mile and a half from Syracuse, is an extensive deposit of marl, similar to 
that found in the immediate vicinity of Onondaga lake ; and large masses of calcareous tufa 
are also found in this valley. 
Beyond this bed of marl are extensive beds of gypsum, of the several varieties which are 
known to occur in Western New-York, viz. the lamellar, the fibrous, the dark coloured and the 
earthy. The specimens of the fibrous variety are more beautiful than any which I have liere- 
* Annales de Chimie ct dc Physique, XII. 48 ; or Repertory of Arts, Second Series, XXXVI. 186. 
t Voyage Mineralogique et Geologiquc en Ilongriependant I'annee 1818. Par F. S. Beudant. I. 169. 
t A Lecture on the Salt Springs of Worcestershire, (England ) with an Appendix, by Charles Hastings, M. D., F. G. S. 
§ This is by no means confined to the anhydrite, as has been asserted, but includes also the hydrous gypsum exactly similar to 
that found every where in the western part of this State. 
