640 STRATIGRAPHICAL GEOLOGY. 



Section III. 



Section III extends from Newcastle and Portsmouth to Walpole, as 

 specially measured, a distance of seventy-five miles, but some additional 

 facts are known for a little of Kittery, Me., and Westminster, Vt. From 

 Kittery through to Newmarket Junction the rocks are referred to the 

 Merrimack group, composed of quartzites, siliceous mica schists, argilla- 

 ceous rocks, with a few feldspathic beds resembling granite, consisting of 

 arenaceous beds metamoriDhosed in place. From Kittery through to 

 Stratham the predominant dip is westerly, corresponding to the easterly 

 dips on the west side of Great bay in Newmarket. Along this section the 

 water of the Great bay seems to occupy a natural basin. In the eastern 

 section of the basin we find several minor axes, as in the north part of 

 Newcastle, among the houses in Portsmouth, etc. More will be discov- 

 ered after careful scrutiny. Next to this modern group comes the Exeter 

 sienite, lying in Newmarket and the east part of Epping. It is followed 

 by essentially the same micaceous and quartzitic formation, though de- 

 scribed in the report under the designation of Rockingham. There is a 

 well-marked basin just east of Epping village, and an equally distinct 

 anticlinal in the west part of the town. This has been noted as the great 

 line of division between the eastern portion, perhaps belonging to the 

 Merrimack group, and the Rockingham and Huronian beds to the west 

 in Raymond. The anticlinal is made by the presence of the Hamp- 

 stead gneiss range, choosing for itself a partly subterranean pathway to 

 join the ancient gneiss in Nottingham, but coming to the surface in West 

 Epping. The schists to the west of this gneiss constitute a synclinal, 

 closely pressed in the east part of Raymond, and containing a very marked 

 band of white quartz just east of the depot. On the west side of the vil- 

 lage, as far as to Jones's pond, the ledges consist mostly of supposed 

 Huronian hydro-mica schist, with some dolomites, suggestive of the Lisbon 

 group in the Ammonoosuc district. There is next a considerable width 

 of the Manchester range of gneiss, remarkably twisted, very granitic, and 

 showing in the central part of Candia the master anticlinal noticed upon 

 Sections i and 1 1, in Mason and Amherst. East of it is the inverted 

 anticlinal in the west part of Raymond, and a synclinal in the east part of 

 Candia. The Manchester granite is not conspicuous in its proper place 



