Connecticut River Valley. 215 
and the meadows, are seen in like manner, in corresponding levels, 
on both sides of the river. 
On alternate sides of the river—In some places the river divides 
the meadow, leaving a part on either side. Next, the meadow lies 
wholly upon one side, whilst, on the other, the river washes the foot 
of the lower plain, which farther on disappears, in turn, and the river 
there flows at the foot of the higher plain, as at Cooper’s rocks 
below Brattleborough, the hour-glass at Windsor, above Water 
Quechy falls, and at many other places, where the sands roll from 
the brow of the plain into the water, from heights of one hundred 
and one hundred and fifty feet. Soon the river is seen winding to- 
wards the opposite hills, the lower plain reappears, then the meadow, 
which at last is found wholly upon that shore where there was no 
meadow, half a mile or a mile above. 
By subsidence.—The interior composition and arrangement of the 
numerous plains is very similar, especially in their frequent beds of clay, 
which are twenty, thirty and forty feet in height. They are com- 
posed of successive layers, commonly from a third to half an inch in 
thickness, and lying in nearly a horizontal position, wherever they 
have not been undermined and bent by local causes. The layers of 
clay beds are in fact composed of clay and quick-sand. ‘The or- 
der in which the materials of each layer are arranged is invariable, . 
and may be most distinctly seen wherever the clay is highly colored. 
At the bottom of the layer is the coarsest, heaviest, and least colored 
portion of the sand. In the center is the finer sand, with an inter- 
mixture of clay and deeper color. The top of the layer consists of 
the finest clay, and is the most highly colored. Beds of clay, con- 
sisting of fifiy, a hundred, and even more such layers, are found in 
plains, and sometimes passing under the river, in extensive portions 
of the valley. This uniform arrangement of materials in the lay- 
ers may be reproduced by dissolving and blending them, and suf- 
fering them to subside by their own gravity in water. During the 
last summer, similar layers, though of greater thickness, were found 
to have been formed in the canal at Enfield falls, out of materials 
washed by rains from contiguous clay hills, within the last two years. 
No method is known, except that of subsidence in water, which 
will produce the same distribution an 
that exists in the layers composing clay-beds. ! 
portions of the plains and meadows, also exhibit proofs of successive 
depositions, in changes from coarser to finer, and occasional stripes 
