698 WILBUR G. FOYE 



For the reasons stated, the writer conceives of the Triassic 

 basins of eastern Canada and the United States as a series of troughs 

 of the basin range type which were developed during the collapse 

 of the ancient land of Appalachia after the Appalachian mountain- 

 building episode. 



The Vale of Eden at the western base of the Pennine escarpment 

 in northern England offers an interesting parallel to the inferred 

 structure of the Connecticut Valley. , Kendall has described the 

 geology of the vale as follows: 



The succession in the Vale of Eden is of particular interest from the evi- 

 dence that it furnishes of the physical conditions of the period and their changes. 

 The valley is bounded on the east by the Pennine escarpment which owes its 

 existence to a tremendous series of faults truncating the Permian and later 

 rocks. The succession from west to east is: Carboniferous Limestone and 

 Millstone Grit, covered unconformably by massive calcareous conglomerates, 

 "Lower Brockram," usually dolomitized; bright red Penrith Sandstone about 

 300m. (1,000 ft.); "Upper Brockram" interbedded in the upper part of the 

 Penrith sandstone; Hilton Plant Beds with Noeggerathia, 45m. (150 ft.); 

 Magnesian Limestone 0-6 m. (0-20 ft.) ; Marls with gypsum having, locally, a 

 basal conglomerate, 90 m. (300 ft.) ; St. Bees Sandstone (Trias) 600 m. (200 ft.) 



The materials of the Lower and Upper Brockrams respectively furnish 

 evidence of contemporaneous movement of the adjacent fault zone. The 

 Lower Brockram consists exclusively of fragments of Carboniferous Limestone 

 and the writer (Kendall) infers that it represents gravel-fans washed by torren- 

 tial rains from the uplifted fault country, when the displacements had exposed 

 only that division of the Carboniferous series. The Upper Brockrams were 

 laid down after the deposition of 300 m. (1,000 ft.) of Penrith Sandstone, which 

 should have covered up an equivalent portion of the faulted area, yet these 

 Brockrams consist in large measure of the Basement Conglomerate of the 

 Carboniferous series, with occasional pebbles of the underlying Ordovician 

 rocks. This is interpreted to mean that between the formation of the two 

 Brockrams a great further movement of the faults took place bringing the 

 base of the Carboniferous up within the action of surface erosion.^ 



The eastern upland of Connecticut consists of such a tangle of 

 metamorphic rocks that the rock succession is difl&cult to interpret. 



' "The British Isles," Handbuch der Regionalen Geologie, Band III, Abteilung i, 

 p. 188. The writer is indebted to Professor Fearnsides, of Sheffield University, for 

 calling his attention to the parallelism here described. "Brockram" is a local term 

 used in the Vale of Eden for the rock known to the western geologists as a "fan- 

 glomerate." 



