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Tidings Plain, to French Street and tlie Weymouth line. 

 This southern and highest part of the plain has its best devel- 

 opment along the lines of Main, East, and Central Streets, its 

 elevation here varying but slightly from 50 feet. West of 

 Hersey and Main Streets it is more fragmentary, divided by 

 swamps and meadows and the branches of Town Brook and 

 Fresh River. It closely invests Great Hill, greatly dimin- 

 ishing the apparent height of this drumlin ; and some of these 

 isolated portions are very typical in form, though more com- 

 monly presenting the forms of rounded hills and hillocks or 

 kame-like spurs and ridges. 



Undoubtedly the most interesting feature of the Lower 

 Plain, south of the railroad, is the tongue or lobe of it which 

 extends northeast along East Street from the vicinity of Main 

 Street to Andrew Heights. This ridg-e of o-ravel and sand 

 rises abruptly 50 feet from the salt marsh (Home Meadows) 

 on the north and slopes gently down to Weir River on the 

 south. It was evidently formed at a time when the basin of 

 the Home Meadows was occupied by a lobe of the ice-sheet, the 

 sand drifting, probably, from the main part of the plain on the 

 west and accumulating against the edge of the ice, the subse- 

 quent melting of which gave the bank its steep northern slope- 

 The special interest of this deposit is, of course, that it forms, 

 as previously stated, a natural dam directly across the original 

 course of Weir River, causing it to turn at a right angle, flow 

 up the valley of what was once a small tributary, over the 

 water-parting north of Turkey Hill, and thence down through 

 Foundry Pond and a straight narrow valley to Weir River 

 Bay, the drainage of almost the entire area of Hingham south 

 of the railroad becoming, in consequence of this geological acci- 

 dent, tributary to Nantasket Harbor instead of Hingham 

 Harbor. South of the glacial barrier, the valley of the main 

 stream and its principal tributaries is broad, open, smooth, and 

 unbroken by ledges, the streams meandering through extensive 

 meadows and swamps ; and north of the barrier the valley is 



