68 
GEOLOGY OF THE THIRD DISTRICT. 
or olive tint; it is fine-grained, and has no tendency to decomposition in any of its localities. 
It therefore makes a durable building material. It is often dotted with hydrate of iron. 
The fossils so numerous in the mass below the grey sandstone disappear with it, leaving 
only a few fucoids to be seen, which are on the surface of the layers, and are not well defined. 
Singular contortions are also visible upon its layers, and in some of them are curved lines as 
if the result of a concretionary action. 
The grey sandstone is of considerable thickness : It forms the whole mass of the falls of 
Salmon river, which is one hundred and seven feet in height; the rock rising above that point, 
and extending some feet below the bottom of the falls, as its dip is there against the stream. 
The sandstone makes its first appearance in the Mohawk valley, at Woodruff’s quarry, to 
the southwest of Rome. It is there a light grey rock not in regular layers, the upper ones 
much broken into fragments. Some portions make excellent grindstones. This sandstone is 
quarried to a considerable extent, and most of the dressed stones used at Rome are from this 
quarry. No fossils are found here. It contains some pyrites in small knobs, which by alte¬ 
ration discolors the stone, and also the same mineral in minute particles, which are percep¬ 
tible by the yellow or ochry points produced when altered. This character is often exhibited 
in the grey sandstone. 
The grey sandstone is seen in the road from Rome to Verona, to the west of the quarry, 
making a small rise on the road. Its color is whiter than usual, probably from exposure, but 
shows numerous dots of hydrate of iron. In the vicinity are some small patches of the same 
kind of rock, in which I found two imperfect bivalve shells, neither their species nor even 
their genus were recognized; also a specimen of the contortions so often seen on the surface 
of the upper part of the mass, in Oswego and the northern part of Oneida county. Further 
west, the sandstone is concealed by the alluvion which extends on both sides of Wood creek 
to Oneida lake; but it reappears from under the alluvion, and covers the greater part of the 
towns of Camden and Florence in Oneida county, as well as the whole of the northeast part 
of Oswego, with the exception of a patch of red sandstone in Redfield. It forms the whole 
middle portions of the towns of Mexico, New-Haven and Scriba, disappearing under Lake 
Ontario about two miles west of Oswego river. A reference to the map will show more pre¬ 
cisely its geographical distribution in those two counties, and in Lewis, of which it forms the 
southwest portion. 
The most prominent points where the grey sandstone was noticed, are the following: 
On Mad river, about a mile and a half above the village of Camden, where it forms the 
sides and bottom near Mather’s mill. Some of the sandstone is of a grey color, like that of 
Woodruff’s quarry; others of an olive grey, with shale, and in thin layers or flags. A sec¬ 
tion near the mill, shows at the top, sandstone in irregular layers, very various as to texture; 
under this, the same, but slightly shaly, with accretions, some of which are two or three feet 
long and eight or more inches in diameter, the lower part with some imperfect fucoids, and 
the layers in parts contorted: no other fossils were noticed. It presents here the dots of 
hydrate of iron common to this rock, and the same flattened accretions of fine shale so com- 
