Gypsum.—A stratum of gypsum of the plaster of Paris kind—that is, consisting of an admixture of the carbonate with the sulphate of lime—occurs on the banks of the Canandaigua outlet. It has been chiefly explored in the township of Phelps, Ontario. In visiting the principal bed (1820), I found the following order of deposits composing the banks of the outlet:—
1. Alluvial soil of a dark, arenaceous, and mellow character, having small stones of the primitive kind sparingly interspersed, two and a half to three feet. Cultivated in improved farms.
2. Shelly limestone, of an earthy, dull-gray color and loose texture, in layers, three feet.
3. Limestone of a more firm character, but still shelly, or rather slaty, fissile, and easily quarried, six feet. This stratum contains iron pyrites in a decomposed state. Also, nodular or kidney-shaped masses of what the quarrymen call plaster-eggs—apparently snowy gypsum.
4. Plaster of Paris, ten feet. This stratum yields granular, earthy, fibrous, and foliated gypsum. It is the first two varieties which are quarried. In some places, the mass is firm enough to admit of blasting. In others, it is loose and veiny, and is readily broken up with iron bars and sledges. Portions of it appear to consist of a shelly limestone identical with No. 2. They are rejected in quarrying.
5. Limestone similar to No. 3, four feet.
At this depth it is covered by the waters of the outlet. How deep it extends is uncertain. The rapids at the village of Vienna are caused by shelving strata of this limestone.
There is a suite character in these strata which appears to constitute them a single deposit. The plaster-bed at Canasaraga exists in a ledge more elevated in reference to the local stream, and presents a broader section of the limestone. The shades of difference which are observable in its color and texture, do not appear to indicate a difference of geological era. Nor do appearances denote, for the calcareous formation which embraces these beds, much antiquity in the scale of secondary rocks.
Saliferous Red Clay-marl.—Examinations, at various points, render it a probable supposition that the red clay-marl of western New York is the equivalent for the new red sandstone, in positions where the latter is—as it often is—wanting. It is extensively deposited in the upland soils, in the range of the salt rock and gypsum counties, from the summit grounds of Oneida County west. It may be seen in various stages of the decomposition. I have more attentively examined it on the upper parts of the Scanado[ [244] and Oneida creeks. Large areas of it exist in Westmoreland, Verona, and Vernon townships, and bordering the valley grounds of the Oneida reservation, and the northerly portions of Sullivan County. The existence of salt water might, apparently, be searched for with as much probability of success, in the district thus indicated, as at more westerly points.
Coal-Formation.—With a strong predisposition to regard our leading sandstone and limestone surface-formations as members of the "independent" or true coal-formation, inquiry has led me to relinquish the impression that they will, to any great degree, be found to yield this mineral. If the sandstone is—as facts indicate it to be—the new red or saliferous sandstone, it may be expected to yield thin seams of coal, in distant places, but no deposit of this mineral which will reward exploration in this or its super-incumbent series of rocks, the slates, limestones, &c. It will result, that the coal-measures, properly so denominated, are a prior deposit in the order of series; and, should they hereafter be found, such a discovery must take place above the range of the sandstone, which is the basis rock at Niagara and Genesee Falls.