2 4 



NEW JERSEY. 



Beginning with New Jersey south of the terminal moraine, how- 

 ever, there is better opportunity to study the formations of the Pleis- 

 tocene Age than in the country to the north. This State has been 

 worked and reworked by able geologists. The most thorough work, 

 especially for the Pleistocene, has been done by Professor Salisbury, 

 working through a number of years with one or more assistants. 

 The Pleistocene has been traced and mapped, and described as con- 

 stituting a large part of the surficial deposits of the State in that por- 

 tion lying to the east and south of a northeast-southwest line running 

 from near the mouth of the Raritan River on to Trenton on the Dela- 

 ware, with a few isolated patches lying to the northwest of this. The 

 Pleistocene here has been divided into two or more divisions, the 

 ground for which, in the absence of fossils, has been based upon dif- 

 ferences in the physical constituents of the several formations com- 

 bined with the topographical relations. The Bridgeton formation, 

 earliest Pleistocene, rests unconformably upon the Beacon Hill for- 

 mation (which is either very late Miocene or else Lafayette or Plio- 

 cene) and older formations. The material is heterogeneous, consist- 

 ing of bowlders, large and small, of gravel, coarse sand and fine, the 

 coarse sand and gravel predominating. The material has evidently 

 been derived by glacial and stream action from the older Beacon 

 Hill, the Miocene, the Triassic, the crystalline schists, and from cer- 

 tain Paleozoic formations varying with the locality. This formation 

 extends in patches across the middle portion of that part of the State 

 occupied surficially by the Pleistocene. The Pensauken, Middle 

 Pleistocene, extends in remnants across the State in northeast-south- 

 west direction in two belts one along the trough from Raritan Bay 

 to Trenton and Salem, and then down the Delaware River ; the other 

 in the eastern part of the State, almost paralleling the shore line and 

 extending back only a few miles from the shore. The Cape May 

 formation, late Pleistocene, covers the border of the State along the 

 Atlantic from Raritan Bay to Cape May; then along Delaware 

 Bay and River to Trenton, everywhere extending back several 

 miles from the shore line, and up stream valleys in some cases 

 twenty-five or thirty miles. It is most abundantly developed in the 

 southern part of the State in Cape May, Cumberland" and Salem 

 counties. The material of the Cape May formation consists of 

 gravel, sand and loam, and indicates, from its slight elevation (forty 

 or fifty feet) and from the absence of bowlders, that it was deposited 

 under less vigorous stream action than were the Pensauken and 



