LONG-ISLAND DIVISION. 
251 
Fig. 13, Plate 3, represents contorted strata of sands and clays, on the north side of a 
small valley extending east and west, near the other localities that have been mentioned on 
West neck. The sands and clays are beautifully variegated in some of the beds. I do not 
know how to explain the position of the strata observed at this place, except some force has 
bent up and overturned them. A lateral thrust from sliding of the strata might have effected 
it, if the direction of the force was from the right-hand side of the section (the south); but 
if such were the cause, it must have acted before the excavation of the valley on that side. 
The sands and clays on some parts of West neck are of beautifully bright and delicate co¬ 
lors, and arranged in strata, and striped in their laminae of deposition, so as to present a 
very pleasing aspect to the eye where fresh sections were exposed. The principal colors 
of the sands are red, light red, salmon color, buff, light and deep yellow, white, grey and 
black. The clays are blue, brown, white, grey, bright and mottled red, and bright and 
mottled yellow. 
Some localities have been mentioned, where the strata of West neck dipped north, south, 
etc. The general dip is to to the east and east-southeast from one degree to thirty, along the 
west shore. The dip is generally not more than two or three degrees; but the strata are in 
many places much disturbed, and changed in position from that in which they were originally 
deposited. 
The west side of West neck shows the clay along the shore in very many places. At the 
brick-yards, of which there are five or six, making 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 of common and 
stock bricks annually, the clay is at least sixty feet thick, as ascertained by boring. Extensive 
excavations have been made for clay. The clay beds dip about twenty degrees east. A 
section at one of the clay pits was as follows : 
1. Red clay; 
2. Brownish clay; 
3. Blue clay; 
4. Variegated sand; 
5. Red sand. 
The variegated and red sands were not seen in the clay pit, but pitched under the clay beds 
as was observed on the shore. The thickness of the clay beds was not noted, but as near as 
I can remember, were about twenty feet each, and the two sand beds about the same where 
they were exposed to view. The white clay was not seen at the brick-yards, but it occurs 
on West neck in several places, as below the first tide mill; another place still farther down the 
neck; and also on the north side, west of the pit, and on the road from Huntington to Cold¬ 
spring, at the pipe-clay pit. Some of the sand beds are as red as if formed of the sand from 
the disintegration of the red sandstone of New-Jersey. Some of the white sands of the west 
shores of West neck and Lloyd’s neck are pure enough for the manufacture of flint glass, 
and others are adapted for lithographic and for fine casting sand. 
