l8 CONNECTICUT GEOL. AND NAT. HIST. SURVEY. [Bull. 



been published. Careful study shows the Highland surface not 

 to consist of one irregular sloping plain, with low hills rising 

 above and deep valleys cut below. On the contrary, if the valleys 

 be filled in imagination and the ravages of erosion repaired until 

 the country is level with the higher hill tops, it will be found that 

 the upland level resembles an irregular flight of giant stairs. The 

 rises are commonly about 200 feet in height, but weathered down 

 to very gentle slopes. The treads average from five to ten miles 

 in breadth and are more nearly level than is the general slope of 

 the upland surface. 



Over much of the country the entire original surface has been 

 destroyed and leaves no clue to its original nature, but on the 

 Western Highland it may still be restored. Near Naugatuck 

 many level-topped ridges rise to elevations of from 700 to 740 

 feet. Above them on the north is a belt of scattered higher hills 

 which reach most extensive development in the town of Prospect 

 at elevations of about 920 feet. In the region of Litchfield the 

 next level shows in many flat hill-tops at iioo to 1140 feet. 

 Rising above these on the north is a wide belt of rolling hill-tops 

 in the town of Goshen which reach from 1340 to 1380 feet in 

 height, and farther to the north are scattered higher hills which 

 represent still older and higher levels. 



The interpretation which this stair-like or terrace character 

 of the restored Highland surface seems to demand is, that, after 

 a peneplain had been developed, the sea planed inland along the 

 entire Atlantic shore, completely across the state of Connecticut 

 and over most of Massachusetts. During this invasion the sea 

 may have partly cut the benches, but most of the terraces were 

 doubtless cut as sea cliffs during oscillations of the shore line 

 which accompanied emergence of the land. The cliffs cut by the 

 successive inroads 9f the sea resulted in a surface partly of 

 terrestrial, partly of marine erosion, a sea-benched peneplain, 

 of which the lower and seaward terraces are much younger than 

 the higher and landward ones. But the lower terraces, those 

 below 700 feet in elvation, were imperfectly developed because of 

 more rapid oscillations and a greater dominance of river 

 trenching. The higher terraces have been so largely destroyed 

 that the details of the landscape are due wholly to later subaerial 

 erosion. It is in the original control of the higher levels that the 



