ClifTord Clays and the Matazcaii. — Knapp. 25 
The author was no doubt warranted in this assumption since 
the Cliffwood clays have been definitely referred to the Mata- 
wan by professor Clark in the Joitrital of GcoL, Vol. 2, page 
163. and also in the "Preliminary Geol. map" of the south 
shore of Raritan bav which accompanies the 1892 report of the 
X.J. G. S. 
Xow the stratig-raphic relations are these : at Cliffwood i:- 
hill sixtv-one feet A. T. according to the topographic atlas. 
On the northeast side a sea cliff is developing which has 
eaten back ncaiiv to the center of the hill : so the top of the cliiT 
is nearly sixty feet above tide. Cap])ing this hill are six to ten 
feet of gravel of Pleistocene age. 
Beneath the gravel is four to six feet of marly clay contain- 
ing invertebrate fossils. Beneath this marly clay is forty feet 
or so of laminated sands and clays more or less lignitic. 
The marly clay bed sandwiched in the hill top under the 
gravel is the basal part of the Merchantville formation the very 
base of the Clay Marls. This bed a few feet in thickness and a 
few rods in lateral extent is all the Clay Marl there "is in this 
cliff. The thirty or forty feet of laminated sands and clays 
beneath and which appear at numerous points along the beach 
for three miles northwest to Chesequake creek are all Raritan. 
The "ferruginous concretions" with fossils found on the 
beach were no doubt talus and came from the marly clay Qler- 
chantville) at the top of the cliff". These concretions are just 
what one finds in the Merchantville everywhere all across the 
state. 
The fauna from these concretions was like the "Crosswicks 
clays" fauna at Pensauken creek ( Lenola ) : naturally it was 
since it is this same Merchantville bed at Lenola that yields 
the abundant fossils. 
The flora no doubt came from the laminated sands and clavs 
beneath the Merchantville, and was "more like the Raritan 
flora :" naturally since this sand is itself Raritan. 
A stranger unfamiliar with the Clay Marls and Raritan 
might easily fail to recognize the Clay Marl-Raritan contact in 
the Cliffwood cliff", but any one who had traced this contact 
across the state from Penns Grove on the Delaware to Cliff- 
wood on the Raritan would not fail to instantly recognize this 
contact in tl:e Cliff"wood cliff. 
