was
plowed into, pushed on in increasing quantity, and at last abandoned as
a formidable mass; where there was little, the same action produced
less conspicuous consequences.
One
of the very interesting features of a part of the New York City
(Greater New York) area is the extra-morainal glacial (or apparently
glacial) drift, known as the "yellow gravel," which is found on Long
Island and within the city limits on Staten Island. Its name applies
distinctively. As seen at South Amboy, New Jersey, and on the front of
Todt Hill, Staten Island (near Moravian Cemetery), it is mainly made up
of rounded, yellow quartz pebbles. In it occur northern silicified and
obscurely preserved fossils and rock transported from northern
positions. As a whole, Professor Salisbury has endeavored, in New
Jersey, to separate it into four formations: the Beacon Hill, the
Pensauken, the Jamesburg, and a problematical fourth stage. These drift
deposits (if they are drift) are probably pre-pleistocene; at any rate they do not belong to the later Glacial
Age. They have undergone great erosion, possibly have been worked over
by wave action, and the strongest argument for connecting them with any
ice epoch is the " presence of large, somewhat widely transported
boulders." (Salisbury.) This curious deposit has been also referred to
the Pliocene (Lafayette of McGee). Upper Hel-derberg fossils have been
taken at Lemon Creek (Princess Bay, Staten Island) in the yellow gravel.
DRIFT
Perhaps
no more convincing testimony to the reality of some remarkable
transporting action could be found than that offered by the drift
boulders. They are so large, so far removed from their original homes,
that only the most invincible prepossession would fail to see in them
the proof of a mechanical power wholly incommensurate with ordinary
geological agents, as floods, shore ice, or gravity.
The leveling of the drift hills of New York has very greatly
