CLIMATE. The climate of the State is of the continental rather than the insular type, though the extreme coastal regions of Long Island are somewhat tempered by the ocean. The range of temperature is nowhere as great as in the States of the Northwestern plains. The average maximum is about 100° and the minimum zero, or a few de grees below. but these figures vary much with the topography, the winters in the Adirondaeks being very cold. The mean temperature for Jan uary is 30° on the coast, 26° in the northwest, and 15° in the Adirondacks. The corresponding figures for July are 72°. 70°, and 64°. The rain fall is abundant throughout the State. In the Adirondacks it is nearly 60 inches. and al New York City, 42 inches. In the rest of the State it ranges between 33 and 45 inches. being least in the northwest.
l?E01.01.1. There are two areas of .\ relnean rocks, which probably represent the portions of the State that rose above the pre-Cambrian ocean. These are the Adirondack region of the north and the Highlands of the extreme south. Both consist of very ancient crystalline and meta morphic rocks, granites, gneis.ses, etc., With in truded basic rocks forming the central or Mount Alarey group of the Adirondacks. The northern Archaean area is flanked on the north by outcrops of Potsdam sandstone of the Cambrian .Age, and again on all sides by a narrow band of Trenton limestone, while a tongue of Lower Cambrian extends from the southern end of Lake Cham plain toward the Iludson Valley. 111 the early Silurian Age a great upheaval connected the Adirondacks with the llighlands and raised above sea-level the regions bordering these on the west. That portion tiff appears as Lower Silurian slates and limest oAes, running in a great curve from Lake Ontario toward Lake George, and thence south and southwestward into the Kittatinny Valley of Now Jersey. On this for mation the Upper Silurian rests unconformably and crops out along the southern shore of Lake Ontario. The rest of the State, including the entire southwestern and south-central portion as far east ?s the llitilson Valley, remained sub merge fl until.the close of the Devonian Age. when,
in the early ('artantiferous Age, it was raised by the great Appalachian upheaval. This por tion is now covered by rocks of the Devonian sys tem, forming the great western plateau, which is terminated by the abrupt escarpment formed by the Ilehlerberg limestone. The eastern por tion of the plateau is more folded and upturned than the western, and is capped by harder sand stone, whence it remains at a higher level as the Catskill .Mountains. The Upper Devonian may been overlain by a light Can•bonifcrois stratum; but if so, the latter has been entirely worn away, and the State contains no rocks later than the Upper DeV011iaIl. with the exception of a ',mall area of Triassic and Cretaceous strata in the southeastern part. (Glacial action has been (-my effective in shaping the present topography of New York, by the formation of lakes, the changing of river courses, the scooping out of some valleys and filling in of others, and the deposition of moraine materials, these materials covering the older rock-formations in an irregn lar sheet fro? a few inches to several hundred feet in thiekness. and constituting rho principal soil of the State.
NliNERA 1:Esot arlis. The coal measures, which are so extensively developed south of the boundary, are not represented in this State. There are valuable clay deposits in the lowlands around the lakes and river valleys, formed by the deposits from the larger lakes which covered those regifais in Pleistocene limes. The granites of the Arch:eau regions, the limestones of the Trenton and Niagara formations in the north west. and 1.1ie Potsdam and Catskill sandstones, especially those layers of the Hamilton group known as the Hudson !live• Idnestone. form sources of building stone. The prinei pal ore is iron, which occurs in extensive beds of magnetite and hematite in the crystal line ror•ks of the .Ndiranchneks. Interbedded With shales of the l'pper Silurian strata south of Lake Ontario are extensive deposits of rock salt from? 15 to t50 feet thick, while other minerals are found in smaller quantities in various parts of the State.