The Diatomaceæ of Philadelphia and Vicinity

The Diatomaceæ of Philadelphia and Vicinity

The Delaware River rises in the Western Catskill Mountains, flows southward for about three hundred and seventy-five miles, and expands into Delaware Bay about sixty miles from the sea. Its origin is among the Devonian and Carboniferous rocks, and in its course it passes through Silurian, Triassic and Cretaceous formations, finally reaching the Cambrian and Laurentian beds. It also drains regions of the glacial drift and beds which overlie overturned Miocene strata, and are sometimes mixed with them. From the mountains, nearly four thousand feet high, to the Bay, where the depth of water is not greater than seventy-five feet, the diatomaceous flora, from Alpine cascades to the salt marshes of New Jersey, contains a larger number of species than any other equal portion of the American coast. The city of Philadelphia, about one hundred miles from the sea, lies at the junction of the Schuylkill with the Delaware, and much of the land near the rivers, especially southward, is flat and low, composed of recent alluvial deposits. In the central districts the ground is high, the deep sub-soil being mostly a dry gravel resting upon gneiss and schist, although it is in part composed of a bluish clay which was probably laid down in the bed of the ancient river before the last period of the glacial drift. The blue clay was not all deposited at the same time, as in the lower strata many marine forms are found which do not occur in the upper layers. This is notably the case in a deposit obtained at Spreckel's Sugar Refinery and also at the east end of Walnut Street Bridge, where a layer of blue clay occurs which is overlain by glacial drift. In other parts of the city mixtures of blue clay with more recent deposits are found, including fresh-water forms from numerous creeks and rivulets which traversed what is now the city proper, and especially from the vicinity of Fourth and Market Streets, where there existed as late as the year 1700 a large pond known as the "Duck Pond" which was subject to tidal overflow from its outlet, Dock Creek. The river water at Philadelphia is not noticeably brackish, although the tide extends thirty miles above the city and, before the building of Fairmount Dam, to the Falls of the Schuylkill. At certain times, when the river is low, the influx of tide water is sufficient to produce an abundance of brackish water diatoms at Greenwich Point. The entire absence, however, at present, of many of the marine forms obtained in dredgings in the Delaware opposite the city, as at Smith's Island, now removed, and in certain well borings at Pavonia, Pensauken, Gloucester and other places in New Jersey, where the depth reached the old blue clay, indicates conditions quite different from those now prevalent. In the Bay itself comparatively few living species are found, at least in any abundance. In the study of local forms which follows, the district included may be considered as circumscribed by the circumference of a circle having a radius of one hundred miles from Philadelphia, containing the States of New Jersey and Delaware, the southeastern part of {6}Pennsylvania, a portion of Maryland on the south and extending eastward to New York Bay and Long Island Sound as far as New Rochelle. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 44569
Author: Boyer, Charles S. (Charles Sumner)
Release Date: Jan 3, 2014
Format: eBook
Language: English