CHAPTER III

Summary

Sept. 2. 1841. — From Niagara Falls we travelled to the large town of Buffalo, on the shores of Lake Erie, and then passed through Williamsville, Le Roy, and Geneseo, in the State of New York. The horizontal Silurian rocks of this region are in general extremely like those of corresponding age in Europe, consisting of mud-stones and limestone, with similar corals and shells. But there is one remarkable exception;—the occurrence in the middle of the series of a formation of red, green, and bluish grey marls with beds of gypsum, and occasional salt-springs, the whole being from 800 to 1,000 feet thick, and undistinguishable in mineral character from parts of the Upper New Bed or Trias of Europe. Near Le Boy I saw these marls and the gypsum exposed to view in quarries. In the overlying limestone at Williamsville were large masses of corals, of the genera Favosites, Cystiphyllum, and others, in the position in which they grew. Some of the species agree with British fossils, but the greater part of them, as I may state on the authority of Mr. Lonsdale, who has studied my specimens, are distinct.

When at the village of Geneseo, I learnt that ten years before, the bones of a Mastodon had been obtained from a bog in the neighbourhood, and I was desirous of knowing whether any shells accompanied the bones, and whether they were of recent species.