CAUDA-GALLI GRIT. 
127 
a half feet in thickness. Fossils are quite numerous in the New-York quarry near the Prison, 
consisting of all the usual ones of this rock. The sandstone not being pure, the specimens 
do not appear to the same advantage as at the next point where it was examined. 
The last locality, to the west, where the sandstone was seen, is to the right of the road 
between Auburn and Springport, on the land of Mr. Yawger. It is in a wood, forming a low 
ledge which is exposed for some distance. Its thickness is nearly three feet: it has been 
quarried. The fossils are numerous, and better preserved than in any other locality of the 
district, State or country, that has come to our knowledge ; the rock being more solid, and 
the sand of which it is composed, purer, and white. Most of the fine specimens in the col¬ 
lection of the State, are from this locality. 
A few broken up layers of the Onondaga limestone rest upon the sandstone, the outcrop 
at the quarry being merely exposed. They form a part of the terminal portions of the terrace, 
which sweeps round from Auburn toward Springport. 
Boulders or blocks of this sandstone are very common to the south of its range in Madison 
county, being found upon the tops of the hills, and upon the hill-sides in the towns of Madi¬ 
son, Eaton, Hamilton, Lebanon, &c., for about fourteen or more miles from its northern 
outcrop at Oriskany falls. In smaller masses it has been found from forty to fifty miles 
south of that line. 
The great facility with which this rock is recognized ; its character so peculiar, con¬ 
trasting so strongly with all the rocks of New-York; its layers so thick at Oriskany falls, 
make it a useful rock in investigating the history of the ancient flows of water in that sec 
tion of country. 
This rock is but a thin mass in New-York, when compared with Pennsylvania, where, 
according to Prof. Rodgers, its maximum thickness is seven hundred feet. Its localities in 
that State are numerous, and it is an important rock, as might be supposed, when it forms 
one of the nine numbers or formations into which all the rocks of that State, which corre¬ 
spond with the New-York system, are divided; having been arranged by its geologists under 
the name of the Appalachian system, the two systems differing only in name. 
In the collection of Prof. Hitchcock at Amherst, there are specimens of this sandstone 
from Greifenstein in Nasovia; and no doubt, before many years, the whole of the New-York 
divisions will be recognized as existing in other and distant countries, having now the facts 
necessary for recognition. 
17. CAUDA-GALLI GRIT. 
Cocktail Grit, of Dr. James Eights. 
This rock is altogether peculiar, receiving its name from its mineral character, and from 
the feathery forms or appearances which abound in it. It is a fine grained, calcareous and 
argillaceous sandstone, usually drab and brownish, and by long weathering it blanches. It 
