RED-SANDSTONE DIVISION. 
293 
It has also been mentioned that a branch of the polar current has flowed through the Cham¬ 
plain and Hudson valley from a very early period of geological chronology, and will be 
demonstrated in the proper place. 
To the influence of the meeting of these two currents checking their velocities, we would 
ascribe the greater breadth of the depositions of red sandstone in New-Jersey and Pennsylvania 
than farther south; and also the dip of the strata and laminae of deposition to the west and 
northwest, as a consequence of the tendency of the polar current to flow beneath the other, 
and to press towards the west as it progressed farther south: thus producing, by a resolution 
of forces, the transport from the eastward to the westward. 
The application of the same principle will, perhaps, explain the easterly dip almost uni¬ 
versally observed in the strata of the red sandstone of the New-Haven and Connecticut valley. 
The strata of older rocks being directed north-northeast, and the ridges having the same di¬ 
rection, would deflect a part of the northern flow of the equatorial current along our coast into 
the Connecticut valley at New-Haven, and west of it over the country between there and 
the Green mountain and Highland range; and while its natural tendency would be more to¬ 
wards the east, to pass over the ridges and through the transverse valleys in that direction, 
the moderate amount of the flow of the -polar current from the north through that valley 
(owing to the relative elevation of the head of that valley) would not very materially vary the 
direction of the former as the current causing transportation; and the polar current would 
also, on account of its westward tendency, flow mostly on the western side of that valley. 
The red-sandstone formation east of the Rocky mountains, and along their base to the Polar 
sea, is presumed to be due to the action of the same general cause acting along those moun¬ 
tains as a coast, as that which produces a similar formation in the Atlantic States and Nova- 
Scotia ; namely, the action of branches of the equatorial and polar currents. To the under¬ 
flow of the polar current through the Hudson valley, cutting off" the farther transport of ma¬ 
terials by the gulf stream in that direction, I attribute the absence of all traces of the red 
sandstone formation on the left or east bank of the Hudson. 
Geological Age of the Red Sandstone. 
1. Professors W. B. Rodgers and H. D. Rodgers have shown that this formation is more 
recent than the coal formation,* 
2. The examinations on Long and Staten islands have shown that it is more ancient than 
the formations of Long island that are equivalent in age to the potter’s clay formation of New- 
Jersey, which underlie the marl deposits, and which are considered as probably equivalent to 
the greensand of Europe. 
3. Prof. Hitchcock has shown, “ that the fossil fishes found in this formation in Deerfield, 
West-Springfield and Sunderland in Massachusetts ; at Glastenbury, Middletown, Berlin, 
• Geological Report of Virginia, 1839, pp. 71, 72, as quoted by Prof. Plitchcock in the Final Geological Report of Massachu¬ 
setts, 1840, p. 438. I have no copy of that report for 1839. 
