Uhler. ] 44. 
[Jan. 6, 
not been ascertained, but the unbroken .end still sticks out of the adjoin- 
ing cliff, at an elevation of about six feet above the surface of the water. 
Broken pieces of this rock lie along the shore in this vicinity extending for 
more than a mile in each direction from this creek. 
On going back into the country, at a distance of five miles, the white 
sandstone again appears in immense deposits from six to twenty-five feet 
in thickness, and rests upon the sides or summits of such hills as have 
been eroded enough to cut down to the level of this stratuni. The rock 
underlies the high hills which stretch across the more south-easterly part 
of this (Anne Arundel) county, and appears at various places over a 
low plateau or moderately rolling country, where the sand lies exception- 
ally deep. South-east of this belt high hills of the greensand Cretaceous 
form an obstructing barrier across the entire width of the county, and 
render it difficult of access. 
In our Albirupean region, however, we rise gradually upon a moder- 
ately elevated plateau, which at its highest point midway between the 
head of the Severn river and Round bay, reaches scarcely more than 
eighty feet above the level of the tide. 
The country sinks down in the direction of the Patapsco river, but 
rises as we go across the Magothy to the banks of the Severn and beyond 
towards the Patuxent. 
The next large exposure of the white rock appears near the head of 
the Magothy river, where it is a massive variable quartzite and sandstone, 
the under-sides and ends of which disintegrate into sand. In many places 
only the denser and more compact parts remain as boulders or long 
masses connected with the sand, which still shows the form and stratifica- 
tion of the original rock; but. which crumbles into a shapeless pile 
wherever it is disturbed. Some parts of the sandstone still retains cores 
of the hard rock, while the other parts extending to a distance of several 
rods farther on have undergone a sort of restratification and take on a 
more level bedding. 
From the evidences abundantly present in almost every section of this 
region, it seems perfectly reasonable to infer that the immense body of 
sand spreading so widely and extending in such deep beds all over the 
belt, has been derived from the decay of this sandstone, in connection 
with the brown sandstone which overlies it, wherever the strata have not’ 
been too much disturbed. 
After crossing the Severn river but few deposits of the white rock come 
to view. The sand continues on, but the rock lies decp in the ground, so 
that only in the wells, or in the deep ravines, do we reach the sandstone, 
and that is usually the upper and ferruginous member of this series. 
However, when we reach the vicinity of the fork of the Great Patuxent 
river, in Prince George’s county, the surface of the country is depressed 
and on a moderately level tract, almost surrounded by an amphitheatre of 
hills, the dense white quartzite once more makes its appearance. Here 
we observe a broken sheet of the rock, more than half a mile in length 
