456 
GEOLOGY OF THE FOURTH DISTRICT. 
water; and if the upper is burned alone, it is found to be too calcareous, and less enduring 
than the more siliceous cements. To obviate this difficulty, both are burned together, but 
without regard to proportions. From the nature of the materials, it is evident that the pro¬ 
portions of siliceous, argillaceous and calcareous matter must be very variable; and too little 
attention has heretofore been given to this circumstance, and to the nature of the ingredients, 
in the manufacture of hydraulic cement. 
West of the last named quarries, the water-lime appears in numerous localities south of 
the outlet, and near the road leading from Vienna to Manchester ; but here it is used mostly 
for enclosures, and at Manchester village for building stone, some of the layers being two or 
three feet thick. It is too soft and argillaceous for hydraulic cement or good lime. Above 
the village of Fredon, this rock is exposed in all its varieties, for half a mile on Mud creek ; 
and along the whole line from Manchester to that village it approaches the surface, and could 
easily be obtained in any required quantity. Thence it extends west to the quarries in Men- 
don, though the surface of the intervening space is mostly covered with deep alluvium. 
The Oriskany sandstone appears in this county, upon Flint creek, at Vienna; it is not 
seen in Seneca county, though loose fragments containing the characteristic fossils are scat¬ 
tered upon the surface. At the locality just named it is a coarse porous sandstone, destitute of 
fossils, so far as observed, with the exception of a single specimen of Ichthyodorulite ; the large 
Atrypa and Delthyris, which characterize this rock farther east, being entirely wanting. Its 
purely siliceous character and porous texture are well adapted to withstand the effects of rapid 
heating and cooling; it is much quarried for firestone, and used in the Ontario furnace, and 
in the glass furnace at Clyde. It contains numerous small geodes lined with chalcedony; 
also rounded masses of a dark rock are imbedded in its surface. These, on examination, 
prove to be very compact aggregations of fine sand, colored with carbonaceous matter, and 
may have resulted, as well as the chalcedony, from the long continued action of thermal 
waters. 
At the place where this rock is quarried, it is four feet thick, divided into two or three 
layers, one of which is about two feet. It rests immediately on a slaty, argillaceous lime¬ 
stone, four feet thick, which succeeds the water-lime proper. 
The Onondaga limestone, which, when free from seams, is perhaps the most durable of 
the limestones, and one of the most beautiful for buildings, is much quarried at Oak’s corners, 
its eastern limit in Ontario county. 
West of Vienna this limestone spreads out over a great surface, covered only with a thin 
coating of soil, and having its northern termination about a quarter of a mile south of the 
Canandaigua outlet. The principal quarries in this neighborhood are within two miles of 
Vienna, these have furnished materials for locks on the canal, for building and step-stones ; 
and some partially crystalline portions, from the unequal expansion, form a good firestone for 
the ordinary heat of a fire-place. At these quarries four layers of limestone are exposed, 
two of which only are workable, the others being too thin, or separated by seams. The upper 
one has in many places been nearly destroyed by the action of running water. 
The Corniferous limestone succeeds the Onondaga, and in some instances alternates with 
