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



these two regions, the delta plain occupying more or less of 

 southeastern Connecticut, with a zone of low hills stretching west 

 and north, to rise into mountains in Massachusetts and New 

 York. The whole is green with tropic jungle in which becomes 

 established the first known flora marked by the presence of the 

 higher flowering plants (angiosperms). These flowering plants 

 of modern type for the first time give to the landscape a familiar 

 aspect, and add by their presence to the beauty of the world ; but 

 their greater service to the earth's progress lies in that they yield 

 for food their foliage and their fruits. Yet the Dinosaurs by 

 power and ferocity still rule the earth, and more or less aquatic 

 forms of these and other reptiles leave their bones as fossils, 

 mired in the clays of swamps or buried in the silts of rivers. 



The eye now notes a change. The streams flow from the hills 

 with gentler current, the hill slopes become less steep, their sum- 

 mits sinking lower. Waste is swept less rapidly out over the 

 delta plain. The ocean strand advances inland across the delta 

 lands. The Cretaceous period has begun, marked by rising and 

 invading ocean waters, which by the middle of this age have 

 flooded the continents more widely than at any time since the 

 ages of the distant Paleozoic. Along the Atlantic shore slight 

 vertical movements of land or sea cause the white line of strand 

 to shift widely, but at the farthest advance of sea the shore lies to 

 the northwest and no land is visible from our view point in cen- 

 tral Connecticut. The last traces of the mountains of the past 

 have vanished and the uplands of the future are still concealed. 

 Over the land to the west there still continues, however, the work 

 of erosion. The mountains retreat to those last strongholds, the 

 regions of harder rocks between the distant headwaters of the 

 streams. A peneplain develops and spreads its low and forested 

 expanse far and wide over eastern North America, penetrating 

 between the residual mountain groups, and extending from the 

 Atlantic shores to the shores of that spreading inland sea which 

 joins the waters of the Gulf of Mexico with the waters of the 

 Arctic Ocean. 



But the age-long tide turns and retreats at last. In central 

 Connecticut the green of waving forests again replaces the blue 

 of the restless ocean waters. Finally begin the great crust move- 

 ments which close the reign of reptiles and usher in the Age of 



