THE PRESENT ROCK SURFACE. 521 



much of it below the present river level, with ;ui old hcd of th<- ( 'niuicct- 

 icut running down its middle iind extending north from Millers FmIIs to 

 the State line with considerable increase of width. And tlic removal of 

 the great swarm of drumlius which crowd the area west of the river 

 in the northern portion of its course would materially affect the contours 

 in Gill and Bemardston. 



On the higher ground west of the valley the removal of the loose 

 deposits would not so materially affect the surface except in the extreme 

 west of Hampden County, and especially in Blandford, whei-e overbroad 

 areas the till reaches great thickness and rises in druralins of the first 

 magnitude. 



East of the Connecticut Valley the same remark holds, except for 

 eastern Hampden and southeastern Hampshire, where the removal of the 

 heavy sands of the great series of Glacial lakes described beyond would 

 greatly modify the surface and would probably show the deep Greenwich- 

 Enfield Valley to be continuous across Ware and thence, via the Beaver 

 Brook and Ware River, to Thorndike, and thence straight south to Palmer 

 station and on through the deep Monson Valley and the imrrow goi-ge of 

 the Williraantic to the sea. (See map, PL XXXV.) The Ware River also 

 seems then to have run directly south to Palmer to join the Swift River. 



This basin stretching from Orange south across the State to its south 

 line at Monson is peculiar in many ways. It is underlain by the Monson 

 gneiss and widens and narrows with the width of this rock. While the 

 broad band of this same rock which lies next west of this forms high 

 ground, this forms a deep flat-bottomed valley, in the center of which rise 

 high, isolated, dome-shaped hills of gneiss, which may have been preserved 

 by a capping- of the same quartz schists which form the high walls of the 

 basin. The whole basin seems to be the result of deej) disintegration of 

 the srueiss. 



