2. The finer muds and clays that would normally develop over an 
area exposed for a long time to weathering,as was New England before 
the ice Age, were largely scraped off by glaciers of earlier Pleis- 
tocene stages, and are now incorporated in pre-iisconsin deposits. 
3. The Ruzzards Bay lote which formed this moraine moved south- 
east across what had probably been a shoreline region before the 
sealevel fell. Thus it picked up enormous quartities of sand and 
silt when it scoured away the ancient beaches and shallow-water de- 
posits that mey have lain along the shore west of what is now Cape 
Cod Bay. 
4, Vast quantities of outwash sand and gravel may have been 
spread over southern New England by glaciers of earlier stages. as 
so, ice of the Wisconsin stage would secure a large volume of such 
debris as it rode over these earlier glacio-fluvial deposits. 
5. The moraine was built by readvance of ice over the western 
margin of the Mashpee pitted plain. Consequently, outwash sands that 
had been laid at the west edge: of the pitted plain were picked up in 
the readvance. . 
Source of the Materials 
Granitic types of rock make up most of the boulders ir this mo- 
raine as well as a large number of the smaller stonese The average 
percentage of granitic types found in seven stonecounts taken at lo- 
calities distributed along the moraine from north’ to south wes 66 
per cent (See Table 2b). This .is decidedly higher than the average 
percentage of such types found in the Sandwich morainee Quartzite 
and vein quartz pebbles make up ll per cert and 8 per cert respec- 
tively of the stonecounts, and these percentages are likewise some- 
what higher than for such types in the Sandwich moraine, Toward the 
southwestern end of the Buzzards Bay moraine many fragments and boul- 
ders of a coarse graphic granite were found. This type of rock was 
not otserved anywhere in the Sandwich moraine. These differences in 
the content of the till of the two moraines and other differences to 
te described. later make it fairly certain that the two lobes that 
deposited the moraines moved over regions differing appreciably in 
their bedrock. This is another reason for separating and distin- 
guishing the two sections of Woodworth's "Falmouth moraire." Many 
of these stones were derived from ledges of granite that crop out on 
the land surface a few miles distant toward the northwest and north 
nd thus indicate in a general way the direction from which the ice 
advanced. 
Character of the eral 
Nearly everywhere the till of this moraine is loosely consoli- 
dated and can he pulled apart easily with a hoe; tut there are 
patches in which it is so compact and hard that local residents and 
well-diggers refer to it as "“hardpane’ Such material breaks irto 
chips like a rock when struck with a hammer, and it is difficult to 
