THEORY. 183 



tains in Peru, Mass., 2022 feet, and" in Ripton, Vt., 2196 feet. The latter is the highest 

 and one of the most perfect beaches measured in Vermont. None have been measured in 

 New England above 2600 feet, and the highest may be a little doubtful. Other cases 

 of similarly elevated beaches, particularly below a height of 800 feet above the ocean may 

 be found in this table. Some of the above instances of agreement are 200 miles apart ; 

 and where several cases are adduced in different localities, the probability amounts to 

 conviction that these different coast lines were formed at the same time and by the same 

 ocean. And the Green Mountain range must have formed one long continuous shore. 



If all the beaches in the country could be assigned to certain determinate levels, there 

 would be some probability to the theory that the continent rose by paroxysms, and 

 remained stationery during successive periods, while the modified drift was accumulating 

 only at these determinate elevations. As the tops of the beaches have long been exposed 

 to erosion , it might be difficult to determine their exact heights ; but the few observations 

 that have been recorded, would seem to indicate a series of beaches from the highest to the 

 lowest, so complicated with one another in different parts of the country as to preclude the 

 idea that they occur only at certain levels. These cases may be known by consulting the 

 table of heights. 



6. The waters that formed these beaches at the highest levels must have been the 

 ocean. For most of the mountains are less than 2600 feet in height, and being therefore 

 covered by the waters washing the beaches could not have served as barriers to 

 retain inland lakes of fresh water. Every beach that has been observed in this State is 

 either so high up as to overlook all hills between itself and the present ocean, or else, 

 where geologists might conceive of a rocky barrier that would stop up the valley, and 

 thereby form a lake upon whose shores beaches might form, drift striae or other evidences 

 of drift agency have be*en found at a lower level than the beaches; and as we have already 

 shown that the beaches were formed subsequent to the drift, the conclusion is irresistible 

 that no water except that of the ocean could have stood at these levels. 



In Fig. 96 we give a section to show the relative positions of the highest beach meas- 

 ured in Vermont, on the west slope of the Green Mountains in Ripton and Hancock, and 

 the surface of the country intervening between the 



FIG. 96. 



beach and the ocean. It will be seen that the 

 highest range between the beach and the ocean is 

 nearly a thousand feet lower than the beach, and 

 that no conceivable barrier could have existed 

 between this bank of modified drift and the ocean. 



A simple syllogism will express the argument 



derived from this section for the former presence Section from a beach at Ripton> vt . to the ocea n. 

 of the ocean at the height of 2500 feet above its 

 present level. Banks of sand and gravel are found 2500 feet above the ocean. No con- 

 ceivable local accumulation of waters could have formed them ; therefore the ocean must 

 have been the one grand cause for the whole. 



Some consider no evidence of the presence of the ocean decisive, unless it have left 

 marine remains, as it has done in the Champlain clays, and elsewhere. As these fossils 

 arc found so near to the Ripton beach, let us examine the connections of the two deposits. 



