672 GEOLOGY OF OLD HAMPSHIRE COUXTY, MASS. 



action of ice is almost as clear as tliat of water. It is a "moraine terrace," 

 as these kettle-holed plains were called, with wonderful acuteness, by 

 President Hitchcock.^ I subjoin my notes of the section as taken July 30, 

 1S80: 



A perfectly though very rudely and confusedly stratified bank makes 

 the upper stratum, commencing- at the sm'face as coarse sands in rapid 

 alternations of grade and pretty regularly horizontally bedded, but below 

 filling up hollows in the next lower bed, and in places there is quite fine 

 sand in the bottom of the hollows. The whole is about 10 feet thick at 

 maximum. 



Next below is a single stratum of coarse gravel about 3^ feet thick, 

 pebbles mostly between three-fourths and 1 inch, but going up to 1^ 

 inches. This has certainly been pushed in all at once in an overloaded 

 flood current, and has gouged into the stratum of sand below, gatliering it 

 up here and there in folds and in other places blending it with its own 

 material. 



Next below are the remains of a sand stratum, in its ujjper pt>rtion fine 

 sand, in places well washed, and 1 to 3 feet thick, or in alternations of fine 

 and coarse sands, the latter also well sorted, the whole stratum nearly 7 

 feet. This graduates below into a coarse gravel, made up for the most 

 ])art of pebbles three-fourths of an inch long, of which 10 feet are exposed. 



It is noticeable that the great majority of the largest bowlders are 

 thoroughly rounded, esj)ecially the quartz bowlders, and many are hard, 

 far-traveled rocks, while side by side with these are many not worn at all, 

 and in one case I found a well-scratched glacial bowlder. 



The great angular masses of the coarse Mount Toby conglomerate 

 are more than 3 feet on a side. South of the cutting a bowlder of conglom- 

 erate 9 feet across lies on the surface of the " moraine terrace," and a peculiar 

 mound rises above its general surface 12 to 16 feet. 



LAKE BOTTOMS. 

 THE BOTTOM OF THE MONTAGUE LAKE. 



From the high terrace or lake bench (1 s h, PI. XXXV) one passes down 

 over a scarp of deposition, not of erosion, to the corresponding and syn- 

 chronous lake bottom (Ibt). This scarp is quite generally well marked, 



'Surface Geology, 1860, p. 33. 



