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rxEOLOGY OF THE FIRST DISTRICT. 
CHAPTER VI. 
NEW-YORK SYSTEM. 
This embraces all the rocks from the Coal formation to the Taghkanic system, including 
the Devonian system of Mr. Phillips, the Silurian system of Mr. Murchison, and most of the 
Cambrian system of Mr. Sedgwick. The name of New-York System is given as a geogra¬ 
phical one ; not that the rocks are confined to New-York, for they really occupy a very large 
proportion of North America, and probably more than one-half the land of the temperate zones 
of the earth; but because they are in New-York better developed, and are so situated that 
their superposition and fossil and mineral characters can be more easily studied than in any 
other part of the earth where these rocks have been examined.. The dip is generally very 
slight, and the valleys of streams and the escarpments of the mountains offer every facility 
for a rigid determination of the order of superposition, the thickness, fossil and mineral con¬ 
tents. 
In the Hudson valley from Lake Champlain to Kingston, and thence through the Walkill 
and Mamakating valleys (which are the extension of the original valley of the Hudson), the 
lower rocks of the New-York system are upturned on their edges, overturned, folded and 
wrinkled in various ways. If an individual were to confine his attention to these deranged 
masses to unravel the order of superposition, he would, as he progressed, find it like “ con¬ 
fusion worse confounded.” It was not until I had become well acquainted with the general 
characters of the horizontal and the upturned rocks, and with the axes of disturbance, that 
these upturned rocks, which are frequently altered by intruded matter in the form of basanite, 
quartz, and sometimes trap, that they were with certainty recognized as of the same geological 
age. The rarity of the characteristic fossils in these lower rocks, and even of any fossils, 
in strata which farther west are replete with them, added to the difficulties in identifying 
them. 
The strata of the New-York system cover a vast area in the United States between the 
Blue ridge and Rocky mountains, and between the Gulf of Mexico and the Primary ridge 
north of the Great lakes. They all seem due to the action of the same cause that has pro¬ 
duced the transportation of the Drift, Quarternary, Long-island, Red-sandstone and Coal 
formations. The great extent, thickness and uniformity of fossil and mineral contents of this 
system, point to the action of the same cause, continued through long periods of time, some- 
