Natural History of New York Volume 5, V. 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1846 Excerpt: ...themselves, and in which they may seek their food. Still one would hardly suppose that simple sand would prove so injurious to life, as to destroy entire races. Hence it is more natural to suppose that some change preceded the deposition of the rock, to which must be attributed the catastrophe under consideration. This change may have consisted simply in the elevation of the bottom of the sea, while the preceding deposits were accumulating. This seems to be a rational hypothesis, inasmuch as there is a change in the kind of materials which compose the sandstone. Previous to this rock, there were calcareous deposits, mixed with sandy argillaceous ones; afterwards there were siliceous deposits, which must have come from another direction. The reader of course will understand, that all the rocks which we have had under consideration in this chapter, are formed of sediments abraded from preexisting rocks, brought from a distance by rivers, to the oceans or seas which existed at this era. Again, the beings belonging to the era of the sandstone were not only suddenly ushered into life, but they were as suddenly put out of life, or, in other words, were destroyed as suddenly and as unceremoniously as their predecessors, and after an extremely brief period of existence. Characters of the Oriskany sandstone. It is composed in the main of coarsish angular sand: in this respect, it is unlike many of the sandstones in the New-York system. The sand is usually gray or yellowish, but sometimes white. Pebbles or rounded stones are not common, if they ever exist in it: it is, at any rate, far from being a conglomerate. Although the sand seems to be held together without cement, yet the presence of lime is indicated by effervescence in a very large proportion of the rock, ev...