Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VIII.djvu/251

 GREEN RIVER le largest ships, and seldom obstructed by ice. Coasting vessels are owned here, and there are several ship yards. The village contains sev- en churches, two newspaper offices, a stereo- type foundery, a national bank, a public school, and four large hotels. It is the E. terminus of the Long Island railroad. Great quantities of are manufactured in floating and stationary stories, from menhaden or bunkers. Torpe- fireworks are extensively made, chiefly by rermans and their children. For a few years ist Greenport has been rapidly rising in im- )rtance as a summer resort and watering lace, on account of its superior facilities for iting, fishing, and bathing. A large hotel r&s erected on the S. side of the bay in 1872, id a still larger one has lately been completed by. In summer there are steamboat lines New York, New Haven, and Newport. GREEN RIVER. I. A considerable stream rhich rises in Lincoln co., Ky., flows W. past he Mammoth cave, and, after receiving Big Jarren river, bends N. W. and enters the Ohio i m. above Evansville in Indiana ; length, nearly )0 m. It is 200 yards wide at its mouth, and the lower part of its course is navigable by amboats at- all seasons, while, by means of ims and locks, small steam vessels can ascend > Greensburg, a distance of 200 m. The upper irt of its valley is occupied by cavernous lime- 3ne, and the lower abounds in coal. II. One the constituents (properly the upper con- mation) of the Colorado of the West. It ses in the Rocky mountains near Fremont's ak, in the W. part of Wyoming territory, in bout lat. 43 15' N., Ion. 109 45' W., flows S., rns S. E. through the N. E. corner of Utah, tering the N. W. corner of Colorado, then nds S. W. and reenters Utah, and afterward rsues a general S. course to its junction, with e Grand. Its entire course is about 500 m. ides numerous affluents which it receives Wyoming, the principal tributaries are the ampah or Bear and the White from the east, d the Uintah, White, Little White, and San ael from the west. Green river for the ater part of its course flows through deep d precipitous canons. It first enters the intah mountains in the extreme N. W. corner Colorado, at a point called Flaming Gorge, ust below which the walls of the cafion are nearly 1,500 ft. high. The stream is swift, the descent being in places 20 ft. to the mile. Rap- f " n s and cataracts, some of them of great height, frequent. There is generally on the one side or the other a narrow strip of land form- ing the valley of the river, but for considerable distances the walls rise perpendicularly from 'he water's edge to the height of 5,000 or 6,000 ", and at one point of 6,500 ft. GREENSAND, an important member of the retaceous group of stratified rocks. In Europe it is found in both divisions of these rocks, the upper and lower, the clay called gault being in- termediate. The chalk overlies the greensand ; and the Wealden clays, where they appear at GREENSAND 237 ues

Sid( all, separate it from the next inferior group, the oolite. In the United States, the greensand is not found throughout the range of the creta- ceous group around the southern termination of the Alleghanies and thence west. It is indeed little known except on its range through New Jersey. The tract it occupies, commencing at the N. E. on Sandy Hook bay, extends S. on the coast to Shark inlet, giving a width across the Atlantic outcrop of the formation from N. W. to S. E. of about 18m. Its length is directed S. W. across the state, the tract gradually growing narrower and terminating in a point at Salem, opposite the N. part of Delaware. Its N. line approaches within 1^ m. of the Delaware at Bordentown, and is but little further back from it a few miles below Camden, opposite Phila- delphia. The dip of the formation is toward the S. E. at a small angle. On this side its uppermost strata disappear beneath the sands which cover the country ; and on the N. W. come up from beneath its lowest beds the clays, well known at Amboy and other points on their range toward the S. W. for their use in pottery and the manufacture of fire brick. A straw- colored limestone, which occasionally appears overlying the greensand on its S. E. margin, calls to mind by its position and the numerous marine fossils it contains the calcareous strata of Europe known as the chalk. The whole thickness of the strata known as greensand is about 100 ft., but one principal bed is recog- nized among the other strata of sand and clays and intermixed greensand, which is about 30 ft. thick. This is in great part, sometimes wholly, made up of small round dark granules ; several are often united in one, and a quantity of them moistened may sometimes be kneaded like clay. The grains are commonly of deep green color, sometimes bluish, and sometimes a dark choco- late ; but whatever their external color may be, they are all bright green when well washed, and especially when crushed. Clay and white silicious sand are commonly intermixed in va- riable proportions with the greensand. In some places fossil shells and other marine organic remains abound in the greensand, being grouped together in layers a few feet in thickness. The species are numerous and often beautifully pre- served. This is especially the case with those found in the overlying yellowish limestone; all are extinct. Of 60 shells collected by Lyell, 5 proved to be identical with European species, viz. : ostrea larva, 0. vesicularis, grypJicea cos- tata, peeten quinquecostatus, belemnites mii- cronatiis. Prof. Forbes regarded 15 of the 60 " as good geographical representatives of well known cretaceous fossils of Europe." Besides these organic remains are found teeth and ver- tebrae of sharks and some other fishes, also teeth and other vestiges of crocodiles and several other saurians, some of gigantic size, one of the largest of which, the hadrosauriis Faulkii, has been restored from a few bones by Prof. B. Waterhouse Hawkins, and is now deposited in the museum of the Philadelphia academy