432 J. D. Dana—Depression of Southern New England 
ill (the cape south of Stonington). Along much of this 
shore, as stated on page 411, there are wide flat meadows be- 
tween the hills and the sea, having a height of about 11 feet 
above high tide. The road passes between these flat meadows 
on the south, and the bowlder-covered hills on the north, and 
the contrast is very striking: the former sandy or gravelly and 
thinly grassy among the great bowlders, the latter having an 
even dense turf over a rich black soil. Above the level of the 
meadows no trace exists of sea-shore flats or beaches; the 
stony hill-sides rise gradually, with nothing about them to sug- 
gest a Champlain submergence. 
Off this shore, one to two miles, there is a sandy barrier; 
rising into hills to the westward, and it may be questioned, 
therefore, whether the meadows may not owe a part of their 
height to the flood waters. But the black soil appears to be 
evidence that they long lay with the surface at the sea-level, 
erhaps as a salt marsh of the Champlain period. Large por- 
tions are thickly strewn with broken oyster shells, left by the 
Indians, and this may be one source of the fertility. : 
o marine relics have yet been found in Champlain deposits 
about any part of Narragansett Bay to mark the sea-level. Such 
fossils should be looked for with more care than has hitherto 
een used ; but much looking will probably end in finding none. 
The great glacier must have filled the channels among the 
islands; and as the ice disappeared, the floods, having a strong 
pitch owing to the height at Providence, would have made @ 
profound sweep through them. Absence of marine fossils 1s 
therefore what should reasonably be expected. 
n 80-foot terrace at Providence, a 56-foot terrace at Hast 
Greenwich, and an 11-foot plain on the sea-coast with no trace 
of any other terrace-level on the coast hills, are the positive 
facts gathered from the vicinity of Narragansett Bay. 
Point Judith (the west cape of Narragansett Bay) and Watch 
Hill 
6. PRE-GLACIAL SAND-HILLS. 
To define more clearly what are true deposits of stratified 
drift of the era of the melting in Southern New England, 1 
add a few remarks on certain sea-shore sand-hills, that are easily 
mistaken for drift formations. I refer to ridges and hills of 
stratified material along the shores between Watch Hill and 
Point Judith. . : 
It has long been known that Martha’s Vineyard consists 
largely of Tertiary sands interstratified with clays, unconsoli- 
dated—except in some places through limonitie depositions 
making a limonitie or iron conglomerate. Block Island, Long 
Island, and Fisher’s Island, just off the New England coast, 
are also made up to a great extent of such unconsolidated 
