NJDEP - NJGS - First Annual Report of the Geological Survey of the ...

8Othirteen hundred feet above the level of the water in the Delaware; Culver's, S_vartwout_s, Long i Morris's, and.numerous -other lakes. , ,The streams take their origin chiefly in 'the central part ofthe county, and empty their waters into the Hudson and Delawarerivers. Among them may be mentioned the Littlo andBig _'latkill, Paulin's Kill and Pequest, whose waters areemptied into the Delaware ; and the Wallkill, with its numeroustributaries, as the Wawayanda, Warwick, Black_ andPapakating creeks, emptying into the Hudson. • .Its geological formations arc as varied as its physical features.:From the earliest period of the earth's ex!stence, thetwo great dynamic forces, the igneous and the aqueous, havehere alternately exerted themselves in forming and modify!ngits surface. At one time the waters of the ocean, teeming.with animal life, covered its whole extent, and deposited thematerials which now constitute its sedimentary rocks. Atanother time igneous agencies upheave d them from their oceanbeds, forming the mountains and the valleys' filling the sedimentarydeposits with rich ores and minerals' and thus here "bringing together the three principal classes of rocks : aqueous,metamorphic, and igneous.• The aqueous rocks consist of a series of blue limestones ofvarious shades of color, texture and composition ; argillaceous,silicious, and calcareous slates and shales, and red, white_ andgray sandstones, grits and conglomerates. They are composedof those series of rocks, denominated by the geologists of the \bTew York survey, the New York System; and ¢orl:espondwith the Devonian and Silurian Systems of the English geol6-,gists. The most recent_ or uppermost of this series, is a blackfissile slate, called Marcellus Slate, the oldest membe/" of theEriQ Division of the New York System. This rock has but avery limited range in this State_ occupying a bend of the DelawareRiver, which extends only three quarters of a raile belowShabacong Island; it then disappears beneath the alluvial.matter of the isiand, and of _h¢ valley of the Dcl_,wam. Itsgreatest width is three hundred yards. It may be examinedNEW JERSEY GEOLOGICAL SURVEY0