NUMBER OF RANGES. 545 



STRATIGRAPHICAL RELATIONS OF THE STEATITE AND SERPENTINE. 



Regarding the steatite and serpentine as rocks of the same age, the question arises, how- 

 many bands or ranges of these beds are there ; and how many of them can be referred to 

 the same geological horizon ? At the outset of this inquiry these ranges naturally group 

 themselves into four different deposits, which AVC must at present consider of different 

 ages unless the doctrine of metamorphism may allow us to suppose that these formations 

 are only repetitions of one another in different mineralogical conditions. The four groups 

 of strata, to which these beds may be assigned are : 1. The talcose schist along Connect- 

 icut River. 2. The gneiss of Windham and Windsor counties, between the two deposits 

 of talcose schist. 3. The talcose schist of the middle part of the State, together with the 

 west range of talcose schist, which may be a repetition of that upon the eastern side. 

 4. The gneiss of the Green Mountains. 



1. The talcose schist along Connecticut River. The beds of steatite in Norwich, Thetford 

 and Fairlee are supposed to belong to a single range. There may be a bed of steatite 

 west of the principal range in Norwich. If so, it is probably the same with the eastern 

 beds, but repeated by synclinal axis. 



2. The gneiss of Windham and Windsor counties. There are two lines of beds of 

 steatite along this formation. We refer them to one geological horizon, supposing them 

 to be repeated by undulations in the strata. The eastern line includes the steatite in the 

 east part of Townshend, in Athens, Grafton, Baltimore and Reading. Upon the west range 

 may be grouped a bed in the west part of Townshend, Pierce's bed in Windham, and a 

 problematical bed in the southwest part of Chester. By consulting Section IV, it will be 

 seen that the different beds dip in the same direction, while there are two axes between 

 them. We regard Bemis' bed, in Townshend, which dips west, the same as the Smith 

 and Goodrich beds in Grafton and Athens, but lying on the opposite side of the anticlinal ; 

 and that Pierce's bed, in Windham, is the same bed brought up again on the opposite side 

 of a synclinal axis. 



3. The great central range of talcose schist. There must be at least two different hori- 

 zons of these magnesian rocks in this range. But one range is developed, or has been 

 discovered south of Windham. Here there are two and perhaps three ranges of the 

 steatite, for the strata all dip in the same direction. The serpentine near the village of 

 Windham, that belonging to Greely & Co., and Putnam's bed, which is represented in 

 Fig. 286, belong to the western range. The eastern range comprises Asa Whiteman's 

 serpentine (though there is some doubt whether this class does not belong to a third range), 

 a bed of steatite and serpentine in the south part of the town, and Putnam's second bed 

 in the north part of the town. The next evidence of two ranges is in Ludlow. Levi 

 Lawrence's bed is on the west side of the talcose schist, while all the rest in Ludlow and 

 in Cavendish are on the east side of the schists. The strata, however, slightly approach 

 the structure of a sharp synclinal axis, which would reduce these two bands to the same 

 horizon. 



At Rochester and Bethel these beds are represented upon Section VII, which can clearly 

 be assigned to two horizons. The beds in Braintree, Roxbury, Northfield and Middlesex, 

 evidently form one range, but may be the same with the ranges in Warren, Waitsfield, 

 Duxbury, Moretown and Waterbury, owing to repetition of strata. But this western 



