346 



THE 01'] DE TO NATURE 



eral direction. An examination of the 

 structure of our local hills shows that 

 thejf are made up of rock masses more or 

 less rounded and modified by glacial 

 action, together with enormous masses 

 of boulder clay or till — the ground 

 moraine of the ancient ice sheet. Some 

 of our hills are largely formed of such 

 derived materials. An artesian well at 

 Noroton Heights, not far from the Stam- 

 ford boundary, passed through one hun- 

 dred and thirty-seven feet of boulder clay 

 and, at the bottom, through gravel, ap- 

 parently river gravel , before entering 

 rock. This, perhaps, was anciently a river 

 valley, filled and obliterated by the glacial 

 ice. It would be difficult to reconstruct 

 in fancy a picture of this region before 

 its burial beneath the ice, but our hills 

 and valleys modified and changed, as they 

 undoubtedly have been, are strongly 

 marked, and for the most part are ancient 

 features. 



The original drainage direction was 

 determined by the general slope of the 

 land toward the ocean, and while it was 

 probably always approximately as it is 

 at present, we should remember that some 

 thousands of feet of rock have been re- 

 moved from the svirface since first the 

 waters began to flow from our highlands 

 toward the sea. The original elevation 

 probably dates from the Taconic Revo- 

 lution, at the close of the Ordovician Era, 

 when the Atlantic border of America was 

 first elevated above the waters as a long 

 range of hills. This region also probably 

 shared in the later elevation at the close 

 of Paleozoic time, when the Appalachian 

 Mountains were upheaved from the sea. 

 It may since have been more than once 

 submerged, but the absence of stratified 

 drift makes this doubtful. The modified 

 drift is of Champlain age, and extends 

 in a level belt along the shore at a height 

 of twenty feet or less above high water 

 mark. The level plain on which the busi- 

 ness part of Stamford is built, and ex- 

 tending to the hills, is an instance. This is 

 an offshore deposit of reassorted boulder 

 clays and detritus, borne seaward by the 

 flood waters of the retreating ice sheet. 

 The surface features of a region are deter- 

 mined by the nature of the underlying 

 rock. A soft, yielding rock gives smooth 

 contours, in striking contrast to the rug- 

 ged character of the scenery in a country 

 of trap rock or granite. Our native rock 

 about southern Stamford and the con- 

 tiguous territory east and west is mostly 



a dark granite, altered by regional meta- 

 morphism into a banded granite gneiss. 

 Out side of this particular locality, it is 

 found widely distributed over Fairfield 

 County, and is everywhere porphyritic in 

 character, the feldspar being in distinct 

 crystals, and g'iving the rock a more or 

 less spotted appearance. This formation 

 is largely penetrated by dykes of diorite 

 trap rock. This is, or was, well shown 

 near the canal on Henry Street, Stam- 

 ford. This dike was originally a quartz 

 diorite. but. sharing in the regional meta- 

 morphism that altered the surrounding 

 granite, it has a more or less banded ap- 

 pearance, so that it is more properly a 

 diorite gneiss. 



Many years ago this locality furnished 

 some good specimens of epidote that 

 occurred in a large "pocket" at the con- 

 tact of the diorite and granite gneiss. 

 This dark granite gneiss, because of its 

 jointed structure, produces a character- 

 istic type of landscape, with rugged hil- 

 locks and angular masses of dark rock. 

 From Westcott's Cove north through the 

 basin occupied by Holly's Pond, we find 

 another granite gneiss formation. This 

 is more massive in structure and lighter 

 in color than the other. It shows many 

 masses of the coarse grained granite of 

 the type called pegmatite. Across the 

 northern parts of the townships of Stam- 

 ford and Greenwich we find the Berk- 

 shire schist. This was originally sedi- 

 mentary rock of Ordovician age, a 

 sediment deposited when the greater part 

 of the continent was submerged beneath 

 the ocean. r)Ut the process of metamor- 

 phism attending the extensive crumpling 

 and upheaval of the Taconic Revolution 

 has altered it to a highly crystalline 

 schist, and destroyed all trace of any fos- 

 sils that it may have contained. Beside 

 the native rock, the surface is everywhere 

 strewn with rock material of foreign, 

 origin, borne along by the ancient ice 

 sheet — granite, quartzite, amphibolite, 

 and what not. making every stone w^all a 

 litholoffical museum- 



The familiar fact that a pine forest 

 killed bv fire is followed by hard wood, 

 has had many attempted explanations. 

 The latest suggestion is that the ash 

 from the burned wood makes the soil 

 alkaline, the pine preferring a more 

 acid condition. But after a few years, 

 the potash leaches out, and the pines 

 start asrain. 



