COMPLEX IN YORK AND OXFORD COUNTIES. 257 



slopes. Not far from the line of the Portland and Rochester Railroad we 

 pass into a gently rolling plain, out of which rise a few granite knobs and 

 other hills, like Bauneg Beg and Agamenticus. This plain extends to the 

 sea. In the tract of country here described there is no single dominant 

 range of hills. There are two systems of valleys, nearly at right angles 

 to each other. The larger streams, such as the Great and Little Ossipee 

 rivers, flow eastward into the Saco. The north-and-south valleys are 

 occupied by numerous lateral tributaries of the principal streams. This 

 arrangement of valleys will in part account for the somewhat rectangular 

 shape of some of the reticulations of this complex series. The local rock 

 of this region is chiefly granitic, and this rock in Maine always affords an 

 abundance of till. In the more hilly country the glacial gravel is in gen- 

 eral quite coarse, containing multitudes of much-rounded bowlderets and 

 bowlders up to 4 feet in diameter. Broad sheets of rounded gravel, etc., 

 frequently have numerous large till-shaped bowlders resting upon them, 

 but these are mostly below 230 feet, and may have been deposited by ice 

 floes. Numbers of short tributary branches come down the slopes of hills 

 to join the main plains, and even these short hillside branches show large 

 rounded bowlders. Along the principal lines of glacial overflow the stones 

 are much worn and rounded, yet here and there they are subangular and 

 differ in shape but little from those of the till. Such areas are usually on 

 the borders of the plains. 



The number and height of the hills which the gravels of this region 

 cross are remarkable. Nowhere else in Maine is there anything equal to 

 them. In Brownfield, Porter, and Hiram the glacial rivers flowed up and 

 over these hills 200 or more feet higher than the valleys to the north of 

 them, and in Parsonsfield and Cornish they crossed several more. In Lim- 

 ington, near the Cornish line, a gravel series goes up and over a pass in a 

 narrow valley called "The Notch," at the western base of Strouts Moun- 

 tain. The" top of the pass is fully 300 feet above the northern base of the 

 hill and about 400 feet above the same gravel series at the Saco River, 2 

 or 3 miles north of The Notch. These measurements were made with the 

 aneroid barometer, but I have tried to make the figures here given under 

 the truth rather than over it. Near tlie tops of the higher hills the gravel 

 is scanty, and then for a half mile or more sometimes none will be found 

 on the southern slopes. These branching series often rejoct valleys of 



MON XXXIV 17 



