CLINTON COUNTY. 
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yet careful examination shows that they are numerous, but the rock is poorly constructed to 
yield them in a good state without mutilation. 
The second mass is probably twenty feet thick, and is composed almost entirely of the 
broken columns and disjointed stomachical plates of apparently a single species of encrinite. 
Of the columns, scarcely more than two rings remain attached : they are mostly single. The 
colour of the mass is such as to conceal, from common inspection, the great number which 
enter into its composition. 
The third mass is made up of multitudes of the genus Orthis. Its general color is grey, 
and it contains less of the dull earthy matter than the lowest mass. It is ten feet thick. 
In the fourth mass, we are again furnished with the same species of encrinite, and in the 
same broken state. The principal difference is, that many of the fragments have a peculiar 
reddish tinge ; and what is particularly interesting in this, as well as the other strata possessing 
the same organic character, is that they resemble a mass much higher in the series. I have 
in view the encrinal rock at Lockport; and though the species are not the same, yet the masses 
would be confounded together without a particular examination. 
In the fifth place, we come to those strata where the lithological characters of the calcife- 
rous are again clearly renewed. The color is darker than usual, but still we have the same 
materials and the same arrangement, except that there is less of crystalline matter, and it is 
rather more siliceous. This mass is not so well separated into layers as the preceding, and 
it is difficult to break it so as to secure a favorable presentation of its fossils; and hence I 
have been obliged to rely principally upon the weathering of the mass, to obtain them. These 
strata contain the univalves, and two of them appear to be new species. In addition to these, 
however, I found a new species of Isotelus and of Illsenus, but neither in a perfect state: 
the ends only could be procured, and these in a separate state. The thickness of this mass 
is not far from twenty feet. 
The next or sixth mass, we find to be a repetition of the Orthis stratum; but it contains a 
still greater number of this fossil, than the preceding mass does. I have not been able to find 
characters sufficiently important to distinguish the Orthis of this mass specifically from that 
of the mass below. 
In the seventh place, the encrinal mass appears again : its characters differ but little from 
those below. The pieces of the encrinite are generally red, and there is less earthy matter; 
and when it is polished, it forms a handsome marble. In all the encrinal masses, I sought 
in vain for heads, and parts which adhered together. Interspersed with these fragments are 
numerous but small oval bodies, pitted all over like a lady’s thimble. These pits or pores 
extend into the coralline, but superficially. They resemble the pores of the fossil described 
by Mr. Conrad, under the name of Fucoides demissus. 
The preceding strata, I ought now to remark, do not embrace all which belong to the calcife- 
rous in Clinton, nor even in Chazy. We find a large development of drab-colored homogeneous 
strata at several places ; one in particular is two miles southeast of the village, where attempts 
were formerly made to convert the rock into lime. At this place it is light yellowish brown, 
the effect of weathering, which penetrates it one-half or three-fourths of an inch, the interior 
Geol. 2d Dist. 40 
