238 The Physical History of the Trias 



which separate the Trias in New Jersey from that in New En- 

 gland, we come first to the outlying mass of these beds in the 

 towns of Sonthbury and Woodbury, Conn. There we find 

 but the ordinary succession of shales and sandstones with trap 

 rock, all inclined to the eastward. This little Southbury area 

 is separated by fifteen miles of crystalline rocks from the Trias- 

 sic region of the Connecticut "Valley, where, it will be re- 

 membered, this formation extends northward from Long Island 

 Sound for about 125 miles, the beds having a very constant in- 

 clination to the eastward. All along the western margin of 

 this area, as we have already mentioned, are the ordinary shales 

 with thick-bedded strata of sandstone. But on crossing the 

 Triassic rocks in the Connecticut Valley, we find on the east- 

 ern margin a peculiar coarse conglomerate, corresponding with 

 the one along the western border of the New Jersey Trias. In 

 speaking of this deposit, Prof. Hitchcock says :* " Still farther 

 east, on the very margin of the valley, we find a coarse conglom- 

 erate in a few places, of quite peculiar character. It is made up 

 chiefly of fragments of slaty rock, argillaceous and silicious, 

 such as we find in place farther north, among the metamorphic 

 strata. The fragments are sometimes several feet in diameter, 

 and the stratification of the rock is very obscure. It looks in 

 fact like a consolidated mass of drift." 



In the geological report of Connecticut, f Mr. Percival 

 speaks particularly of a " coarse conglomerate along the eastern 

 border of the large secondary formation, which can be distinct- 

 ly traced to different varieties in the adjoining Primary, fre- 

 quently in the immediate vicinity ;" and farther on, he mentions 

 that " generally on the immediate border of the Eastern Prima- 

 ry, a coarse conglomerate occurs." 



The only conclusion which it seems possible to draw from 

 these facts is that this line of comglomerate in Massachusetts 

 and Connecticut marks out a portion of the eastern shore of 

 the Triassic estuary whose western border we followed in New 

 Jersey. 



* Ichuology of Mass., p. 11. tPage 428. 



