Prone 
the surface below which it lies. Therefore, wells will vary in depth 
from 80 feet in ene eee Flat parts of the plain to 15 or 20 feet 
near the lower e 
Low, wave-cut ses facing-narrow sea beaches have been eroded 
along. the low margin of the plain, if “the original gentle surface 
of the plain be projected out in imagination beyond the present 
cliffs until it touches sealevel, it appears that the plain once ex- 
tended from a quarter to, half a mile farther seaward. Waves and 
shore currents have beaten the shoreline back by this.amount. At 
distances greater than. half a mile off the Falmouth shore today, or 
one mile off the shore at Cotuit, the Coast and Geodetic Survey 
charts (No. 1209 especially) show a drop-off that is far too abrunt 
to be continuous with the original surface of the pitted plain. If 
the pitted plain once extended beyond that line, recent excavation 
by currents,or wave cutting at some lower stand of the sea,has modi- 
fied the bottom contour too much to allow reconstruction of the orig- 
inal outer edge of the plain. 
Buzzards Bay Moraine 
Location, Boundaries and Character 
The Buzzards Bay moraine is a belt, half a mileto’a mile and a- 
half wide, of .boulder-strewn hills and-dales, knobs and hollows. It 
extends in almost a straight,line from the nortn-central part of the 
Pocasset quadrangle southwestward across the northwest corner of the 
Falmouth quadrangle to Woods. Hole, near the southeast corner of the 
Woods Hole quadrangle, (Plate I). Thence it curves westward to in-. 
clude the Elizabeth Islands. pats, is the southwestern part of Wood- 
worth's (7) "Falmouth moraine. Its northern end terminates rather 
abruptly in a ragged, cliff-like-edge about 100 feet high that trends 
almost due east and west,: about a mile and a half southeast of the 
south end of the Bourne Brides over-the Cape Cod Canal. This slope 
marks a place -where the ice of the Cape Cod Bay lobe rode forward 
over the northern extent. of the Buzzards Bay moraine and pushed ma- 
terials of the latter up into a hummocky ridge. When the ice re- 
treated away from this ridge, the material slumped to form the steep 
slope facing northward. 
Many of the irregular hills in the northern part of the moraine 
rise to altitudes of.250 to 300 feet above sealevel; the hig ghest, 
Signal Hill, is 406 feet above the waters of Buzzards Bay. The bot 
toms of many of. the wmdrained hollows scattered haphazardly among 
these hills are at altitudes of only 150 to 160 feet. Southvestward 
the general altitude of the higher knobs decreases, but the differ- 
ences in altitude between the Imobs and the kettle-hole bottoms are 
approximately the same as in the northern stretches of the moraine. 
In other words; the topogravhy of the southern end of the moraine on 
the Cape is just as rough as it is in the Bourne area, although the 
general surface is nearer scalevel. 
Throughout its entire length the moraine is liberally sprinkled 
with huge boulders and subangular blocks of rock, some of them as 
