Report on the medical topography and epidemics of the state of New York : Submitted to the American Medical Association at its annual meeting at New Haven in June, 1860 / By Joseph M. Smith.

  • Smith, Joseph Mather, 1789-1866.
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report on the medical topography and epidemics of the state of New York : Submitted to the American Medical Association at its annual meeting at New Haven in June, 1860 / By Joseph M. Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    vania, Ohio, and other States, to underlie the coal measures, and as no coal has been found where this relation does not exist, and moreover, as no coal has been found above or reposing upon the same, where it occurs in New York, it is reasonably inferred that no coal fields exist in the State. It is true, very thin interstratifi- cations of coal of a few feet in length and an inch thick have been found in a few places and in connections different from those just described, but such examples do not fall within the range of the coal formations, as will be shown hereafter. 5. THE NEW RED SANDSTONE AND TRAP. It is remarkable that the rocks constituting the New York sys- tem are nowhere overlaid by rocks more modern than the coal formation, except in a few limited districts, where the newer second- ary rocks or those of the cretaceous group succeed the latter. As an instance of the occurrence of such a newer secondary rock, where there is no coal, is the new red sandstone, in the first geological district, or southeastern part of the State. This rock occurs exclu- sively in the counties of Rockland and Richmond, underlying the trappean rocks to be noticed hereafter. From the former county it extends into New Jersey, and to the States further south as far as North Carolina. In many localities where the trappean rocks do not rest upon it, its superposed materials are generally drift and alluvial deposits. The rock varies in color; instead of being always brick red it is sometimes brown; it also, as Mr. Mather says, varies from pebbly conglomerate, through common sandstone, fissile and mica- ceous sandstone to shale; and in composition from perfectly sili- cious, to an argillo-calcareous marl. Of the same lithological varieties as those of New York are the red sandstones of Nova Scotia, Connecticut, Lake Superior, and the Rocky Mountains. The red variety is much used in architecture, and the gray and red conglomerate sandstone in constructing the hearths of iron furnaces. Superimposed on the new red sandstone are the trappean rocks. These, like the former, are limited to small portions of Rockland and Richmond counties. In the former county, they appear on the left bank of the Hudson River, and extending south along the same to Hoboken, present a bold, perpendicular wall, varying in height from 150 to 800 feet. This continuous and elevated ransre of trap rocks is composed of materials which, it is thought, closely ally it with the columnar basalt of other countries.