DISTRIBUTION OF SOILS. 
213 
Beginning on the eastern borders of the State, and proceeding westward, we may ar¬ 
range the soil and boulders in separate and distinct belts. The first belt, according to this 
view, comprises the soil and boulders resting upon the Taconic system of rocks, which 
borders the State eastwardly. Here almost all of the boulders, and the whole of the soil, 
consist of the debris of the Taconic rocks. Now it has been found that this system of rocks 
ranges far north, and in the direction which the drift has travelled : hence the soil is what 
it would be had it never been moved at all; it is the soil of the rock upon which it reposes. 
This forms the first belt, and extends to the slope of the valley of the Hudson river. In 
the valley, however, we begin to find the rocks and soil of the lower part of the New-York 
system, together with a few granitic, gneissoid, and hornblendic boulders ; but these con¬ 
stitute only a small proportion of the matters composing the soil of the valley. From the 
eastern rise of the Hudson valley, to a point a few miles west of the city of Schenectady, 
the boulders and soil are derived from the Champlain group : this constitutes the second 
belt. At and near the village of Amsterdam, and extending perhaps as far west as Cana- 
joharie, hypersthene boulders are cjuite numerous, and serve to characterize a belt, which, 
so far as boulders are concerned, is somewhat peculiar, by the presence of a great number 
from the Adirondack mountains : it is therefore considered as a distinct belt, although the 
soil is still that derived from the Hudson-river or Champlain rocks. This is the belt of 
boulders that extends south into Orange county, and perhaps much farther in the same 
direction. 
West of Littlefalls, the Potsdam and Medina sandstone, together with the Calciferous 
sandrock, and also the Primary rocks of the western slope of the high grounds of Jefferson 
and St. Lawrence counties, abound ; but in Herkimer county, or the eastern part of Oneida, 
we believe the hypersthene boulders are not found, or at least are not so numerous. When 
we reach that belt, however, which ranges along the St. Lawrence river, hypersthene 
boulders are again common. But here there seems to be a range or belt of them entirely 
distinct from those of the Adirondack mountains, which are found in the belt at or near 
Amsterdam. The former can not be traced to these mountains, but range onwards farther 
to the north, and probably extend to Labrador, or the great primary region of Canada 
West. This hypersthene belt is much wider than the first, and even reaches the borders 
of Lake Erie. 
On the line of the Erie canal, it is impossible to distinguish belts of boulders, for as 
soon as we pass the Little falls and Herkimer county, the sedimenary rocks begin to trend 
to the west, and from hence the boulders of Medina sandstone extend to Lake Erie. There 
can be distinguished, then, only two belts between the village of Littlefalls and Lake Erie. 
Still some of the rocks form distinct bands of drift: the Niagara limestone, for example, at 
Rochester, lias been carried a few miles south from that city, where its fragments lie in 
great numbers, and in their original angular condition, without the least change having 
been wrought upon their sharp corners. This is sometimes the case with other boulders 
also, but they are usually more or less rounded. 
