1894. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 9 
3. That the crumpling takes place along the line of greatest 
stress or weakness, 7. e., along the major axis of the area of 
deposition. 
The question which this paper is designed to present and 
discuss is what indications are there of crumpling, upheaval, or 
any other phenomena identical with or simulating mountain 
making processes in the Atlantic coastal plain region and 
whether they may be better accounted for on the theory of 
mountain making as previously outlined, or upon some other 
hypothesis. 
From the character of the material which enters into the 
composition of the strata forming the coastal plain and from 
their succession and the organic remains contained in them, we 
know that there was a transition from fresh or brackish water 
to marine conditions, and that the area of deposition was 
probably a shallow syncline or trough, with its major axis prac- 
tically parallel with the present coast line, that is in a north 
and south, or somewhat northeast and southwest direction. 
With the great vertical fluctuations in level which are recog- 
nized as having taken place since the eocene we need not con- 
cern ourselves, as they practically affected all parts of the 
region alike. It is merely in regard to local disturbances, anal- 
ogous to mountain making processes, that this paper has to do. 
PRINCIPAL LINES OF DISTURBANCE, AND THEORIES WHICH HAVE 
BEEN ADVANCED IN REGARD TO THEM. 
Indications of faulting or folding have been mentioned by 
several observers in the Southern States, notably by W. H. Dall 
in Florida * and in all the observations the facts point to a 
system of folding or dislocation in a general north and south 
direction, as our previous experience would naturally cause us 
to expect. 
Further north, extending from Nantucket and Martha’s Vine- 
yard, through Block Island, Gardiner’s Island, Long Island, 
Staten Island and northern New Jersey we find another line or 
area of disturbance, having a general east and west direction. 
The facts, however, in connection with this area are so different 
from those with which we are familiar-elsewhere in America, 
that but for the circumstance of one isolated portion having 
been utilized by a prominent authority as an example of moun- 
tain making forces, it would not have occurred to me to discuss 
it in such connection. Prof. N.S. Shaler, in his ‘‘ Report on the 
ee ““Notes.on the Geology of Florida,’’ Am. Journ. Sci. XXXIY. (1887) 161-170. 
- Bull. No. &, U.S. G. g., “Correlation Papers—Neocene.”’ 
