MERWIN: SHORE-LINES. 329 
is crossed obliquely by inconspicuous terraces which radiate from its 
southeastern margin. Á small stream enters the valley near this 
point. The terraces face a nearly level valley floor below which the 
small stream and the Waterbury River are entrenched a few feet. 
Northward from the edge of the highest terrace the gravels become 
hummocky, a few kame kettles appear, and near the 700-foot level 
clay becomes conspicuous, even on the knolls. The clay is clearly a 
lacustrine deposit. 
It is apparent then, that stagnant ice was present during the deposi- 
tion of the gravels, and that the valley north of the divide was occu- 
pied by a lake after the disappearance of the ice. 
Although my studies were not detailed enough to give data for a 
thoroughly satisfactory explanation of the origin of the terraces, I 
feel sure that they represent approximately the levels at which lake 
waters stood, submerging the lowest part of the divide.t The alti- 
tudes of beaches near Montpelier (735 feet) and near Morrisville in 
the Lamoille valley a few miles north of this divide (760 feet), are 
further evidence that water stood high enough to over-top the divide. 
I have called this water body Lake Mansfield because of its topo- 
graphic relation to Mt. Mansfield. 
—.— Main Valley. The upper Winooski valley between Plain- 
field and Montpelier is deeply filled with water-laid deposits which 
rise to an altitude of 750 feet.” 
On Seminary Hill in Montpelier a section exposes the following 
sequence of deposits. Upon a thick base of clay there rests 6 feet of 
horizontally bedded fine sand. The sand is followed by 4 feet of 
gravel in thin broad lenses. The contact of the gravel and sand is 
so nearly a plane that I believe the gravel has been dragged from a 
beach by wave-currents, over off-shore sands, during the lowering 
of the water-surface under which the sand was laid down. The 
slope of the gravelly surface is a few feet per hundred upward 
from this locality to the hills, the line of meeting being about 675 * 
feet above the sea. A level at a corresponding altitude, and gravel- 
1 Either the terraces were cut and leveled by wave action — which seems improbable 
because they slope — or they were made by a stream which was confined by ice walls 
on both sides. Evidence of an ice wall on the north side is at hand, but such evidence 
on the south side I did not notice. The brook entering the valley at the east end of 
the terraces, acting with water from the melting ice, is a possible terrace-making agent. 
2 Clay and cross-bedded gravel dipping east were noted in a cut west of the viaduct in 
Plainfield, at an elevation of 750 feet. 
3 The altitudes in the vicinity of Montpelier are referred to Montpelier Junction (522 
feet). The railway stations in Montpelier are not more than 5 feet lower, 
