during the melting of the Glacier. 433 
pre-glacial beds,—as I shall more particularly explain in an- 
other memoir. 
The New England coast region, from Watch Hill eastward, 
is but a continuation of Fisher’s Island, in its features, an 
also, as there is reason to believe, in its Tertiary deposits. 
hills or ridges are of various heights, up to 180 feet; and noth- 
ing besides unconsolidated, though bedded, sand, gravel and 
clay, occurs in their constitution. Clay-beds are not in sight. 
But near the Ocean House, one of the large Watch Hill hotels, 
a pond, near the sea-level, is called Clay pond, because of the 
clay beneath the water; and I am informed by a resident in 
the region, that masses of clay are sometimes thrown up by 
the sea on the beach, showing that it exists at the base of the 
sand hills. 
Over the stratified material of the hills lies the unstratified 
drift, with multitudes of large bowlders . 
ese hills show that they do not consist of Champlain or 
later deposits by the following characteristics. 
n the first place, the hills are, as stated above, covered 
throughout with bowlders, down to within 10 or 12 feet of the 
sea level, and this demonstrates that the hills were there before 
=e etic of the bowlders and the associated gravel and 
sa 
_ Further, the features as to the bowlders and the hills are 
Just those of Fisher's Island, which lies in their line at a dis- 
tance of only three miles to the west ;—and not that distance, 
since there are intermediate islets and reefs connecting the two; 
and on Fisher's island the clay beds and sand beds which 
underlie the top-dressing of unstratified bowlder drift are in 
some places upturned and folded—proving thus their anterior 
origin 
We may hence set aside those sea-border ridges as not of the 
Champlain period, and regard them as prior in elevation even 
to the Glacial period. Only the low grassy plain at their foot 
along the shores is of the Champlain water-arranged drift 
formation. 
CONCLUSIONS. 
The observations described in the preceding pages relate 
only to five of the river valleys of Southern New England. 
Although I have made no systematic measurements of terrace- 
heights in other valleys, I have seen enough in many of them 
to assure myself that all have the same class of facts to afford. 
fhe conclusions which are here reached with regard to the 
Tiver floods are therefore conclusions for all Southern New 
England, and beyond this, I believe, for all New England, and 
other regions covered by the great glacier. 
