LONG-ISLAND DIVSION. 
265 
weighing from fifty to one hundred pounds. Most of the specimens were found in the high 
bank next the shore, at what is called Fort Hill, and East Fort, on Lloyd’s neck. The bank 
is probably one hundred feet high. 
(e) . Near Coldsprings, (two miles southwest) in Oysterbay township, fossil wood was found 
in digging a well on John or Thomas Velsor’s land. The depth at which it was found was 
not stated. 
(/). Lignite was found at the depth of fifty feet, at Mr. Wilson’s well, near Coldsprings, 
Oysterbay township. It was so hard as to require to be chopped with an axe.* 
(g) . On East neck, Huntington, Capt. Sill dug up lignite, which he called coal, at the 
depth of thirty or forty feet. One piece was nine or ten inches in diameter. 
(h) . On the north or northwest side of East neck, Mr. Briggs found fossil wood changed to 
liraonite, at the locality of white clay. 
(f) . On Eaton’s neck, he also found lignite and fossil wood in several places. At the south 
end of the main island of Eaton’s neck, the cliffs are eighty or ninety feet high; and the 
sands above the white clay contain fossil wood and nodules of limonite, like those of Lloyd’s 
neck. He found one mass of fossil wood eighteen to twenty inches in diameter, some parts 
of which were in the state of rotten wood, some had been converted into iron ore, and in 
others the decayed pans had been replaced by sandstone. This large mass was so tender 
that hand specimens only could be obtained from it. It could not be removed. Specimens 
of similar character, but smaller, were found in the sand-beds above the white clay, for more 
than half a mile along the shore. Few of the specimens were proper lignite, but were wood 
more or less fossilized by limonite, and containing more or less carbon and rotten wood. 
Their fossilization is doubtless due to the same cause as the formation of the nodules of iron 
ore, and of ferruginous sandstone and conglomerate, namely, the decomposition of pyrites. 
Mr. B. found fossil wood also on the north shore of Eaton’s neck, and on the east shore. 
Specimens from all the localities were collected,! and all have the same geological position. 
{j). Fossil wood was found twenty-five feet below the surface, on land of Mr. Napier, three 
miles west of Jamaica.^ 
{k). Carbonized wood, incrusted with pyrites, was found in Newtown, fifty feet below the 
surface; also a body of a tree lying across a well at forty-five feet; another at sixty feet, a 
little east of Westbury meeting-house; another, with the bark still adhering, at forty feet, 
near Eastwood’s ; another at Success, on the summit at the ridge of hills, thirty feet deep.^ 
(Z). Lignite, or charred wood, has been found on Cow neck, and at Newtown. That on 
Cow neck was on the farm of Joseph Dodge. Two shafts were sunk here to obtain coal, 
which was supposed to exist, in consequence of the deceptive appearance of fragments of 
lignite.§ 
♦ Bruce’s Mineralogical Journal, Vol. 1, p. 362. 
t Several boxes of specimens collected by Mr. Briggs, who was sent to many interesting localities to collect specimens, never 
reached their destination in Albany. The suite of Long island is not a.s complete as it would have been if they had been received. 
X Ackerly on Coal, in Bruce’s MineralogicalJoiirnal, Vol. 1, p. 132. 
^ Mitchill on the Geology of Long Island, ibidem, Vol. 1, p. 129. 
Geol. 1st Dist. 34 
