SOILS OF MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT. 3 



ducing a gently rolling surface. Dissection of this plateau through 

 a long period of time has been so pronounced that the existing sur- 

 face is extremely irregular. It is a succession of much worn-down 

 knobs and hills, with narrow intervening valleys. The hills are 

 multiformed. Some are steep, and others not only steep but small, 

 thus rendering cultivation expensive. Others, however, are dome- 

 shaped, or at least sufficiently regular and smooth to afford many 

 good farming areas and sites for orchards. 1 The higher parts con- 

 sist of isolated hills or chains of hills, with much less definite direc- 

 tion than those of the Highland section adjoining on the west, 

 where the trend ranges from north and south to northeast and 

 southwest, as in all of both States farther west. The dome-shaped 

 hills that frequently characterize this section are much more rare in 

 the Western Plateau. The northern part of the Eastern Plateau 

 is drained by the Merrimac Eiver, of which the two principal 

 branches are the Concord and the Nashua Eivers. Much of the 

 Concord Eiver basin is drained by its two important branches, the 

 Sudbury and the Assabet Eivers. The southern part of the region 

 is drained by the Charles, the Blackstone, and the French Eivers. 



THE EASTERN HIGHLAND. 



The Eastern Highland extends from the Eastern Plateau to the 

 Connecticut Valley Basin. Its general slope is southerly, and the 

 general range in elevation, barring exceptionally low and exception- 

 ally high points, is from 700 to 1,200 feet. The high hills are some- 

 what broader in the northern part than in the southern, a fact which 

 undoubtedly led in colonial days to the establishment of villages on 

 several of these elevations ranging in altitude from 1,000 to 1,200 

 feet. Some of the villages in such locations are Shutesbury, Wendell, 

 New Salem, Prescott, Pelham, Petersham, Phillipston, Templeton, 

 Eutland, Oakham, New Braintree, Wilmington, Mansfield, Gilead, 

 and Winchester. 



The drainage of the Eastern Highland is mostly to the west and 

 to the southwest. In the northern part Millers Eiver rises in the 

 vicinity of Gardner, flows due west, and enters the Connecticut near 

 Millers Falls. In the central part the Swift, the Ware, and the 

 Quabaug Eivers have their sources. These streams flow together at 

 the town of Three Eivers, forming the Chicopee Eiver, which enters 

 the Connecticut at Chicopee. The extreme southeastern part of the 



1 The apple census of Massachusetts prepared by the State hoard of agriculture for the 

 year 1905 shows the highest producing areas to be in those sections where this dome- 

 shaped topography is most characteristic. This is an adaptation to conditions of topog- 

 raphy and soil that had gradually come to be apparent, as the deepest and most pro- 

 ductive soils of each section in southern New England are usually located in this favor- 

 able topographic position. Erosion also is not serious and tillage is relatively economical. 



