ANCIENT WATER LEVELS OF CHAMPLAIN-HUDSON VALLEYS 233 



time also referred the deposit to a nonglacial origin^ but sup- 

 posed it to be Prepleistocene because it was overlain about its 

 base by the outwash plain of the Wisconsin moraines, and 

 because I then saw no feldspathic pebbles which are so char- 

 actoristi(^ of glacially derived materials in this field. In re- 

 visiting Ihe ridge with Messrs Fuller and Veatch in the spring 

 of 1903, they pointed out a consideiable percentage of compound 

 gravels in the deposit allying it with the Pleistocene deposits, 

 in referring it to which I fully concur with them. These 

 authors regard the deposit as an outlier of the Manhasset,^ a 

 deposit of glacial origin containing much locally derived 

 material and as I think all are agreed, deposited during a time 

 of submergence. The deposit at Far Kockaway therefore has- 

 no bearing on the question of the attitude of the land during, 

 the late Wisconsin ice retreat; and if the Far Rockaway gravels 

 and the Manhasset formation are the equivalent of the Cape 

 May formation this last named with its signs of depression of 

 the land in southern New Jersey must be contemporaneous not 

 with the Wisconsin ice epoch but probably with the next pre- 

 ceding glacial advance or the lowan. 



It may be urged that if, at any time during the retreat of the 

 ice, the land was raised several hundred (say 700) feet above 

 sea level south of the Highlands, the Hudson gorge should 

 there now be deeper, in the manner of the Norwegian fiord. In 

 the absence of boringsi in the bed of the Hudson river we are 

 in ignorance of the depth to bed rock in the deepest part of the 

 buried channel. However deep the filling may be, undoubtedly 

 a great amount of filling has been washed in from the clayey 

 banks and the upper Hudson gorge which has been reexcavated 

 in its clay filling. Since the deposition of the Albany clays 

 something like 8 cubic miles of clay and coarser sediment have 

 been removed from the old gorge between say Kingston and 

 Fort Edward. If we suppose this sediment to have found its way ^ 

 to the bottom of the river between Peekskill and the Narrows, a 

 distance of 65 miles, this supply of silt and clay alone would fill 



^Woodworth, J. B. N. Y. State Miis. Bnl. 48. 1901. p.651, also map 

 pil. 1. 



^Fuller, M. L. & Veatch, A. C. Results of the Resurvey of Long Island, 

 New York. Science. 1903. 18:730. 



