QUATERNARY DEPOSITS. 
225 
In most places marl is a pure carbonate of lime, occasionally discolored by vegetable matter, 
and containing the common fresh-water shells of the country. But little comparatively is yet 
used, being made into bricks and burnt for lime, which is remarkably white. In time it will 
be used for improving the soil, as chalk is in England, and will be manufactured into whiting 
and paris white. 
Localities of the first source. 
The first noticed was on West-Canada creek above Newport, in a pond to the right of the 
road on the east side of the creek. 
In Madison county, through the towns of Lenox and Sullivan, it is in immense quantity. 
A large deposit exists on the south side of Canastota village, between the canal and the hills 
south. The greatest amount is in Cowasolon swamp, covering several thousand acres. 
There, as in most of its localities, it is covered with peat or muck. When a part of the 
water was drawn off from the swamp, by a drain into Oneida lake, a large portion of the 
muck was carried with it, leaving a snow-white surface of marl of great extent. The marl, 
it is said, has been sounded with poles, but the bottom not reached. 
The same kind of marl shows itself in numerous places in Onondaga county, north of the 
canal; in the great swamp in the town of Cicero, for example; also near Messina springs. 
The whole of Onondaga lake is bordered by it, the surface showing accretions of tufa of half 
an inch or more in diameter; the marl covering the bottom of the lake, and extending north 
and south of the lake for some distance. It is about six feet thick in all places where bored. 
East of the tunnel near Syracuse, there is an interesting section through which the railroad 
passes, showing in the ditch clay, and two deposits of marl, which separate three deposits of 
muck with stumps and roots, chiefly of tamarisk or balsam. 
Lake Sodom, near the canal in Manlius, is a marl lake; its sides and bottom are covered 
with this mineral, which its waters continue to deposit; the trees and other objects which have 
fallen into the lake, being whitened by it. The marl at the bottom of the lake is of a blackish 
color, owing to vegetable matter; a fact of frequent occurrence in the ponds of the district, 
and readily explaining the cause of the dark color of many limestone rocks which have had 
a like origin. 
Lake Marl from alluvial materials. 
The high ground northwest of Peterboro’, on the road to Perryville, shows swampy soil 
and alluvion with calcareous pebbles, the bottom of the ditches by the roadside exposing marl. 
The marl of the lakes or ponds near Cortland are connected with no other materials than 
those of alluvion. Limestone pebbles are in abundance there, and through the valley north. 
The lakes of Tully also are marl lakes, and are similarly situated. So likewise those in 
Madison county, in the valleys of the towns of Eaton, Madison, Lebanon and Hamilton. 
Geol. 3d Dist. 29 
