DEIFT DIVISION. 177 
linued on Staten island, for a short distance from Forts Tompkins, Richmond and Hudson, 
but in a few miles it mostly disappears below the quaternary sands. 
The loam in which the pebbles and boulders are imbedded, is reddish about Bath and thence 
on towards Brooklyn. Shells are said to have been dug up in almost every well in this hilly 
range, but I could find none, nor obtain a sight of one at any locality where they had been 
found. 
The boulders abound from Fort Hamilton to Yellow-hook. I crossed the hills in various 
directions, and the character was uniformly the same, namely, loamy soil, with many boul¬ 
ders of trap, and some of serpentine and red sandstone like those of Hoboken and the ad¬ 
joining trappean range, and granite and micaceous gneiss like those of the island of New- 
York. 
Above Gowannus, in the lower part of Brooklyn, a fine section of strata was exposed where 
they were cutting through the grade of- street, at a depth of forty to fifty feet. The 
strata of gravel and clay were very much contorted in one locality, showing distinctly the 
action of a disturbing force, ranging nearly east and west. A little north of this, the corre¬ 
sponding strata, which were of a yellowish brown clay, interlaminated with very fine sand, 
were horizontal. Shells were said to have been found here; but although I examined the 
stratum very carefully in which they had been found, I saw no traces of any. They were 
said to have been found between the sand and clay strata, which alternate in thin layers. 
The discussion of the subject of the shells will be deferred until the tertiary strata shall be 
described, as they are supposed to belong to that formation. 
Plum island, Gardner’s island. Gull island, Fisher’s island. City island. Hart’s island. 
Barn islands, the Brothers, Riker’s island, etc., all contain an abundance of boulders and 
blocks in a formation similar to those of Long island; and as their drift deposits are very simi¬ 
lar to those of Long island, and would give no additional evidence of importance bearing upon 
the northwardly origin of the drift, it is considered superfluous to adduce localities and minute 
descriptions from them. 
The drift deposits form the surface and shore of a part of Staten island. At the Quaran¬ 
tine, this deposit contains boulders intermixed with sand and loam overlying granite.* 
At New-Brighton, boulders were exposed in great numbers in grading the streets. Be¬ 
tween the Quarantine and Fort Tompkins, deep and fine sections were exposed in grading 
the streets of a premature city. Greenstone is the predominant rock; but granite, gneiss 
and red sandstone, are very common. The whole soil, in fact, is red, in consequence of a 
large portion of its materials being derived from the red sandstone. The strata containing 
these materials show the action of water in their deposition, not only in the rounded form of 
the pebbles and boulders, and the scratched surfaces of some of them, but in the water lines 
of deposition, showing the lamination oblique to the stratification, as we see in sand and 
gravel beds forming at the present time. Boulders of serpentine, and the peculiar granite or 
sandstone described at Whitestone and three miles east of Flushing, occur mixed with the 
more common ones before described. 
* Granite rock in place was visible in 1837, on the shore in front of Nautilus Hall at the Quarar 
Geol. 1st Dist. 23 
