1894. | NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 15 
On Staten Island the facts are even of greater interest and 
significance. The moraine crosses a portion of the coastal plain 
near the Narrows, thence bends northward and rests upon the 
archean axis and again enters upon the plain a few miles 
further west. 
I had long been familiar with the fact that beneath this latter 
portion of the moraine there exists a contorted series of gravels, 
sands and clays, comparable with those of Long Island, but it 
was not until about two years ago, when a deep cutting was 
made for the Staten Island Rapid Transit Railroad, through 
the moraine near the Narrows, that we were able to demonstrate 
the existence of a similar structure there.* 
At the extreme southwestern end of the Island and in the 
adjacent portion of New Jersey the evidences of distortion are 
not so manifest. Instead of violently crumpled folds there is 
a more undulatory structure to the core upon which the bowl- 
der till rests, as if it had suffered erosion or had been merely 
squeezed upward in places, the strata often retaining their nor- 
mal dip and strike, and portions of them are to be seen included 
in the till, as described by A. Helland} in regard to the brown 
coal strata at Teutschenthal, near Halle, Saxony, “ being some- 
times caught up and included en masse in the till.’’ In the 
vicinity of Kreischerville, Staten Island, this phenomenon is 
specially prominent, particularly where a mass of pure white . 
cretaceous clay is imbedded in the red bowlder till (see Fig. 3) 
I am inclined to attribute the lack of violent crumpling in this 
area to the fact that the ice advanced over this portion of the 
coastal plain from a comparatively level region, and therefore 
merely eroded it to a limited extent and slid over it, without 
plowing down to the depths which it did in those regions where 
it flowed over an escarpment of hard crystalline rock onto 
the inccherent strata of the plain, as in the case of Long Island 
Sound and eastward. It is also to be considered that but a 
very limited area of the coastal plain was reached by the ice in 
New Jersey and on Staten Island, so that the force of its 
advance and the weight of its mass must have been far less 
there than to the north of Long Island and Martha’s Vineyard, 
and the material for erosion much more limited. In other 
words, the greatest indications of disturbance are to be seen 
where the ice advanced over the greatest extent of coastal plain 
area. 
*“ Notes on the Geology of the New Railroad Cut at Arrochar.’’ Proc. Nat. Sci. 
Ass'n. S. I., June 10th, 1893. 
+‘‘Ueber die glacialen Bildungen ‘der Nord-Europiiischen Ebene,’”’ Zeitschr. d. 
Deutsch. Geol. Gesellsch. x xxi. (1879) 63-106. 
