202 J. D. Dana on the Glacial and 
waters. Where plunging waves accompanied the rapid flow, 
the resulting layers would have been composed of wave-like 
parts, each independently laminated.* In quiet waters, the 
deposits should have been of all degrees of fineness and regu- 
larity down to those of clay. 
The older terraced alluvium or stratified drift of the valleys 
of New England presents in its various parts all the different 
kinds of deposits here described. The material is generally 
stratified. Much of the alluvium over the interior has at inter- 
vals beds that are obliquely laminated; but this characteristic 
is most common toward the coast. The terraces of an estuary, 
like that of New Haven, are only the terminations of those o 
the river valleys which open into the region about the estuary; 
and the latter are identical in character with those over all New 
England, and part of one and the same system. 
IL The depositions along the valleys and estuaries con- 
tinued to increase in extent, long after the melting of the 
egal was ended, through contributions from the unstratified 
rift which lay loose in immense quantities over the hills; and 
afterward, during the rest of the Champlain era, it went forward 
more slowly, from the ordinary operation of fluviatile, lacustrine 
and marine waters. 
IX. The facts afford the following argument in favor of 
some of the views above stated. 
(1) The prevalent stratification of the old terraced alluvium 
over New England is evidence of its sedimentary origin. (2) 
From the vast width of many of these alluvial regions, we 
infer an extraordinary flow of waters over the country. (8 
The great thickness of the deposits, rising in some places, for 
long distances, to two hundred feet or more above the river, 
and no doubt originally filling the valley to the level of the 
upper terrace; and still more, the frequent occurrence of thie 
obliquely-laminated layers—one such in the New Haven region, 
reaching the extraordinary thickness of eight feet,—are indica- 
tions of a very rapid and abundant supply of sand and gravel; 
and the beds of coarse stones, often intermingled, tell of currents 
of immense power, or of sudden falls from the floating or over- 
hanging ice. (4) As the vast flow of waters and the vast flow 
of sand and gravel were concurrent events, and since the era 
of deposition immediately followed that of the great glacier, 1t 
seems to be a most natural inference that the final melting 0 
the glacier set free both the water and the stones and earth. 
* Several of these points are illustrated in my Memoir on th gy of the N 
Haven region. Layers of this composite kind characterize much of the “ Orange 
Sand ” in northern Mississippi, as represented by Prof. Hilgard in his Geological 
Report on that State, who has shown that this formation is in all probability only 
sh ct 1 
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