THE MERIDIONAL SERIES 489 



first discovered through the study of the drainage of the eastern half of 

 the state (east of the Connecticut river).* This direction of drainage is 

 peculiar to the section of the river itself ahove Middletown (see plate 

 46.) By examination of plate 45 it will be seen that this line (VI) is 

 continued northward 50 miles or more beyond the borders of Connecti- 

 cut. Not only is it for nearly 100 miles an important line of drainage, 

 but examination of a geologic mapf will show that it is for long dis- 

 tances on the border of Vermont and New Hampshire the formation 

 contact of the Archean with the Cambrian in some instances and with 

 the Silurian in others. 



Hudson- Cham plain line. — If now we examine the map of plate 45, we 

 note that this bearing is the dominant direction assumed by the larger 

 New England rivers. The Jersey shore also, with the gorge of the 

 Hudson, the rift of lake Champlain, and the long rectilinear courses of 

 the Richelieu, Saint Maurice, and Croche rivers, together make an almost 

 uninterrupted hydrographic line (V) more than 600 miles in length, 

 which extends from Barnegat, New Jersey, more than 100 miles beyond 

 the Saint Lawrence river. If we examine the larger scale maps of the 

 same region, we observe that this course is maintained through a series 

 of zigzags, but }'et by zigzags which never pass far to either side of the 

 main direction. Such a line, whose course is maintained with such 

 amazing fidelity, seems to be in every way analogous to the course of 

 the cliffs of the Palisades from Bayonne to Edgewater, a course main- 

 tained through zigzags in which several other fault series play a role, as 

 they do, in fact, in nearly every fault cliff which we examine. This 

 remarkable line has in the Lake Champlain section been recognized as 

 a line of dislocation, and is designated by the Canadian Geological Sur- 

 vey as a part of the great Saint Lawrence-Champlain fault.J In its 

 southern section, near the city of New York, the writer has shown that 

 it represents a line of dislocation along which the Newark formations of 

 New Jersey are set down into the crystalline rocks lying to the east of 

 the Hudson. § Between the Hudson-Champlain line (V) and the Con- 

 necticut line we find a range of mountains (the Green mountains and 

 Berkshire hills) which maintains the same direction, though west of the 

 Hudson the axis of the Appalachian chains is inclined to this direction 

 by 60 degrees or more. Not only do the Hudson-Champlain and the 

 Connecticut lines and the Green Mountain range itself maintain a com- 



* The river system of Connecticut. Jour, of Geology, vol. ix, 1901, pp. 469-584, two plates. 



t Map of the United States, exhibiting the present status of knowledge relating to the areal dis- 

 tribution of geologic groups. (Preliminary compilation.) Compiled by W J McGee, Washington, 

 1884. Plate II of the Fifth Annual Report U. S. Geol. Survey. 



JCushing has used the name " Champlain fault" for a parallel dislocation in this vicinity. Fif- 

 teenth Annual Report State Geologist of New York, p. 572. 



I Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. 13, 1902, p. 143. 



