120 
GEOLOGY OF THE THIRD DISTRICT. 
dance appears to exist at the lower part of the mass, but too much mixed with sand, or the 
matter of the rock, to be as yet of use. From one to two hundred tons of ore were quarried for 
the Lenox furnace, but was not found to be workable, from the refractory nature of the sand ; 
no simple earth being fusible in an ordinary furnace, but three are required to fuse readily. 
This is the only locality which I know of in this rock, either in this State or further south, 
where iron ore exists, and no opinion favorable to the discovery of ore more free from its 
matrix could be given. There are many localities in New-York in the Clinton group, where 
sandstone is highly colored and coated with iron ore ; but no appearance exists in those places, 
to exhibit itself in a separate state, owing doubtless to the easy permeation of the mass to 
the particles of the ore, and the difficulty if not impossibility of their ejecting such heavy 
particles as sand from the sphere of their aggregation, crystallizing carbonate of lime having 
no power of the kind, though highly active when in that state, and the red oxide of iron on 
the contrary is rather a passive substance. 
At the Falls at Perryville, and below Cazenovia, the Oriskany sandstone is but a few 
inches in thickness. 
The sandstone appears in the side hill about a mile and a half south of Onondaga hollow, 
on the west side. It is but partially exposed, showing a thickness of about seven feet. It 
contains some of the usual fossils ; also a fucoid of a peculiar kind, not heretofore seen in 
this, or in any other rock : it is in the State Collection. 
At Split-rock, very little of this sandstone is to be seen; it shows itself between the water- 
lime group and the Onondaga limestone, from a mere sprinkling of sand, to a thickness of 
about sixi nches. 
Between Elbridge and Skaneateles, on the old Seneca road, the sandstone shows itself in 
the road, and of a thickness of about thirty feet. Towards the middle parts there are a few 
straight fucoids about one-third of an inch in diameter, and others about the size of a pipe 
stem, the whole of which are in a vertical position: no branches observed. The sandstone 
is white, yellowish and dark grey, with spots or points of hydrate of iron, as if from decom¬ 
posed pyrites. 
On a parallel road to the outlet of Skaneateles, is the quarry from whence the stone for the 
lock at Jordan was obtained. Not much rock is exposed ; the lowest layer was the one used. 
Fossils few in number, chiefly the Arenaceous delthyris; there was also a pileopsis and a 
columnaria, such fossils being rare in this sandstone in the third district. The stone in the 
lock at Jordan has resisted the wear and the weather, better than would be supposed for a 
rock of its loose texture or nature. 
To the right of the road on the farm of E. Grizzle, in sinking a well, this rock showed a 
thickness of twenty-two feet, under which was the dark colored limestone of the water-lime 
group, the same layer from whence the blocks to the north of the village of Skaneateles were 
derived. 
The Oriskany sandstone appears in the quarries to the north of Auburn, between the water- 
lime group and Onondaga limestone. It is quite thin, varying from a few inches to two and 
