ElylSHA MrTCHBIvIy SCIE^NTlFlC SOCIETY. 43 



nental province. Such a submerg-ence must have 

 brouo-ht the ocean to the very foot of the Appalachian 

 mountains which had received their initial uplift just 

 before the beginning- of Triassic time. But, if on the 

 other hand, the deposits were made in lagoon-like 

 baisins of inland waters, the ocean shore-line may still 

 have stood as far out as at present, or farther. The 

 evidence is that those areas south of the New Jersey 

 area at least, were accumulated in inland seas. If 

 such was the case — and it is the most probable the- 

 ory — the Triassic ocean extended inland in a great 

 bay with its center somewhere near the mouth of the 

 Hudson River and its shore-line reaching to the base 

 of the Appalachians in western New Jersey and east- 

 ern Pennsylvania whence it swung gradually south- 

 ward to somewhere near the position of the present 

 shore-line. 



The conditions of depositions of these sediments have, 

 however, always been difficult to reconstruct. No so- 

 lution has ever been offered which proved generally 

 satisfactory. The Connecticut basin seems to repre- 

 sent the estuarine phase of a river which was the an- 

 cestor of the Connecticut. From analogy, I would 

 offer as an explanation of the elongated similar basins 

 to the southwest that they also represent drowned 

 portions of consequent rivers which ma}^ be reasonabl}^ 

 supposed to have existed at so short a time after the 

 folding of the crust which formed the Appalachian 

 system. The character of the deposits w^ould accord 

 well with this supposition. 



Following the Triassic period of deposition came an 

 emergence causing a retreat of that part of the shore- 

 line south of New England, by which it assumed a 

 position coinciding with the present shore in Long' 



