Presidential Range of the White Mountains. 453 



Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine monadnocks are com- 

 mon. The White Mountains seem to be only a cluster of 

 unconsumed remnants . . . but in spite of the nearness 

 of these northern states they have not been explored with the 

 upland peneplain and the monadnocks in mind. No definite 

 statement can at present be given to the altitude of the 

 upland in northern New England or as to the degree of per- 

 fection that it attained."* Again in 1899, Professor Davis 

 writes: "The White Mountains have been in my mind tenta- 

 tively classed as a group of monadnocks ; they do not, as far 

 as I have seen them in brief excursions, stand upon any dis- 

 tinct basement comparable to that of the uplands of New 

 England further south. . . . The ruggedness of the dis- 

 trict is generally so great that it is quite possible that the 

 peneplain explanation does not apply to the greater part of the 

 area. Little wonder that an observer w r hose attention is given 

 to this mountainous district under the impression that its 

 mountain tops represent the remnants of a peneplain should 

 come to discredit such an explanation. "f 



It is my purpose in this paper to point out the possibility 

 that the summit portion of the Presidential Range, contrary to 

 the implication by Professor Davis in the foregoing quotation, 

 may be a remnant of that ancient graded landscape which, 

 according to his theory of baseleveling, consisted in the more 

 southerly portion of New England in a rather fully developed 

 peneplain. In short, it will be suggested that the subdued 

 cones of Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and the other sum- 

 mits of this range are low monadnocks surmounting a pene- 

 plain whose only surviving fragments, in this district, are the 

 upland "lawns" and "Alpine pastures" that lie along the 

 crest of the range. 



The TJx>land "Zawns." 



As one ascends Mount Washington from the southeast he is 

 impressed by the extraordinary flat area which he reaches 

 about 1000 feet below the summit. This great "lawn" 

 extends along the top of the range from the upper end of 

 Boott's Spur for over a mile before reaching the foot of the 

 cone of Washington. Its width is fully half a mile and its 

 rise so slight and so gradual that in contrast to the precipitous 

 headwalls of the ravines below and the rather steep sides of 

 the cone above the lawn appears smooth and level. It is 

 perhaps the most striking feature encountered because the 



*Op. cit. p. 283. 



\W. M. Davis: The Peneplain, American Geologist, vol. xxiii, pp. 209- 

 210, 1899. The italics are not in the original. 



