26 The American Geologist. January, 1904. 
Moreover the region southwest of Cliffwood four to :ix 
miles is nearly bare Cretaceous and this contact can be trace.l 
across country with greatest ease. There is no mistaking it. 
Stratigraphically there is only one horizon at which the Rar- 
itan-Clay Marly contact can be rationally drawn. 
The Raritan is a very heterogeneous deposit lithologically ; 
here it is a dense black fat clay, there it is a snow white high 
grade potters' clay, again it is a clean white quartz sand ninety - 
eight per cent silica, at another place it is a laminated sand and 
clay with logs of lignite and leaf beds and pyrite nodules galor^. 
The change in the Raritan from the one to the other of thesp 
types of material is strikingly sudden both laterally and verti- 
cally, so that along the strike at the Clay Marl contact the Rar- 
itan is here a black lignitic clay, there a white clean sand, here 
a white clay and there a gravel bed. Structurally, lithologically 
and physically the Raritan is very erratic. 
In striking contrast with this is the Merchantville bed at 
the base of the Clay Marls and lying immediately upon the 
Raritan. 
The Merchantville is everywhere the same, persistent, ani 
monotonously uniform from Penns Grove to Cliffwood, always 
a marly clay or clayey marl. It was dug for fertilizer in a score 
of places in days gone by ; always weathering in characteristic 
fashion. Always has the characteristic "ferruginous concre- 
tions" and so far as I have observed always fossiliferous. 
This is the most sharply defined contact in the Cretaceovs 
of New Jersey ; and it is no doubt the most significant since it 
reflects the most radical change in conditions of sedimentation. 
This is not saying that the Cliffwood clays are not Matawan 
but it is saying that they are not Clay Marl. 
If the Matawan is the equivalent of the Clay Marl, if the 
base of the Clay Marl is the base of the Matawan, then the 
Cliffwood clays are not Matawan. 
If the Cliffwood clays are Matawan then the Matawan dis- 
regards stratigraphy and groups a part of the Raritan with the 
Clay Marl. If the Matawan is a faunal name simply then sucfi 
a grouping would be possible, but in that event the paleontolog- 
ical and paleobotanical evidence must needs be very weighty 
since such a grouping does violence to the stratigraphy. 
