The Neiv England Peneplain. 69 



made. Nearly every state in our country must be much more 

 carefully studied than it yet has been before its physical features 

 will be made known to us. The geographical descriptions now 

 accessible in j)rint Avould be very gently characterized if only 

 called "old fashioned." Where newer material has been pub- 

 lished, it is generally fragmentary, brief, and imperfectly illus- 

 trated. The first elements of geographical study, the physical 

 features of the earth — especially of its surface — still call for 

 devoted investigation. 



It is not simply a description of the forms of the land that is 

 wanted. It is a recognition of the forms as dependent on struc- 

 ture and sculpture, and a comparison of like and unlike forms 

 in a systematic manner. This requires special study, precisely 

 as petrography does, and the desired end Avill not be gained until 

 the work is placed in the hands of men especially trained for it. 

 Having found this study an absorbing interest for several years 

 past, I shall try to make my meaning clearer by introducing 

 specific illustrations from New England. 



Southern New England consists essentially of a gently inclined 

 plateau, rising to 1,400 or 1,600 feet above sea level in the rolling 

 uplands of western Massachusetts * and southwestern New 

 Hampshire, and thence descending gradually southward and 

 east^vard to sea level at the coast. This inclined plateau is 

 nothing more than a slightly tilted lowland of denudation, the 

 product of long-continued destructive action of the atmosphere 

 by which a once larger mass was worn down to a surface of 

 moderate relief close to the baselevel of its time. The south- 

 eastern extension of the old lowland was depressed beneath the 

 sea at the same time that its interior ]3ortion was elevated to form 

 our New England plateau; the present coast line therefore lies 

 roughly midway on the surface of old New England. 



The continuity of the plateau-like uplands is interrupted in 

 two ways ; isolated mountains rise above it, and branching 

 valleys sink below it. Mount Monadnock is a typical example of 

 the former, with its bold summit more than a thousand feet 

 above the surrounding plateau. When seen from a distance to 

 the southwest, it rises in symmetrical triangular outline above 

 the level skyline of its base. It is not a mountain of local con- 

 struction, raised by upheaval above the mass of the plateau ; it 



* Nearly all the districts thus referred to in the address were illustrated 

 by lantern slides. 



