Topographical Features of the New Haven region. 85 



of the Quinnipiac river. This 8^ feet was made up of fine quicksand. 

 The clay was a sandy clay, or what the brick-makers call " weak clay." 

 This well is about 80 rods east of the depot. At two others, between 

 the depot and the river, clay was found, and in one, there was at top 

 4 feet of sand ; then 5 feet of " weak clay ;" and below quick-sand, 3 

 feet of it above the level of high-water in the river. 



The clay beds, according to Mr. I. L. Stiles, do not extend beneath 

 the deep muck of the great meadows ; on reaching the muck, instead 

 of keeping at the same level, it dips dowyiward with a rather large 

 angle beneath the muck. What lies beneath the muck, whether clay 

 or sand, has not been ascertained. In making the track for the Air- 

 line railroad, which runs for nearly a mile and a half obliquely (north- 

 eastwardly) across the flats, piles were driven to various depths, down 

 to forty feet ; solid bottom was reached, but the nature of its material 

 is unknown. 



Over the region north of North Haven village, the upper plain or 

 terrace is very wide and the lower relatively narrow, the reverse of 

 what is true to the south. Moreover, the country is remarkably sandy, 

 large fields of loose moving sands making part of the surface. These 

 sands are the present top of the upper plain or terrace. When this 

 region, in the Champlain era, lay at the head of the great Quinnipiac 

 harbor near high tide level, it was in a condition to be washed over by 

 the running waters, and it is probable that the grinding and sifting 

 then went on that robbed the sands of their feldsj^athic and other 

 softer grains ; and that what the sands lost the harbor received as a 

 contribution to the mud of the liarbor, now the clay beds. 



The description of these beds of clay is here inserted under the 

 head of the "Later events of the Champlain era." But it is not at 

 present possible to decide whether part, or even all, of the deposition 

 may not belong to the early part of the era. We need to know some- 

 thing more definitely with regard to the relative positions of these beds 

 and the others of the drift-formation before a positive conclusion can 

 be arrived at. The layers of sandy clay in the section at the cut for 

 the Air-line railroad, represented in fig. 2 (p. 83), although 20 feet 

 above the level of the meadows, may have some relation to the clay 

 beds farther north. The fact that they have a dip toward the Quin- 

 nipiac basin is a significant one, as intimated on page 72. 



What depositions were going forward at this time in the Beaver 

 Pond basin, the central basin of the New Haven harbor, cannot be 

 ascertained without an artesian boring. Such a boring would de- 

 velop several facts of interest ; for the depth to the sandstone bot- 



