170 THE COASTAL PLAIN FORMATIONS OF CECIL COUNTY 



or are developed in lenses and are mixed together in varying 

 amounts. Up to the present time no animal remains have been dis- 

 covered in them within Cecil county, but an abundance of vegetable 

 remains has been met with in old lagoon deposits belonging to the 

 Talbot formation. 



The various members of the Columbia group are developed as ter- 

 races, lying one above the other, and are horizontal in position with 

 the exception of a slight initial dip toward the waters out of which 

 they have been raised. As the beds lie in this horizontal position it is 

 out of place to speak of them as striking across the county. The 

 most that can be said is that they occupy most of its southern two- 

 thirds, and their northward margin crosses the State from north- 

 east to southwest in a line approximately coincident with that of the 

 Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. 



The Sunderland Formation. 



The Sunderland formation has been so called from its typical de- 

 velopment near the hamlet of Sunderland in Calvert county, Mary- 

 land. It consists of a wave-built terrace composed of clay, loam, sand 

 and gravel, which were deposited by the waves of the Atlantic Ocean 

 when the county stood at a lower level than it does to-day. Its base 

 lies at about 90 feet, and its upper limit at a height varying from 

 about 160 to 180 feet. It has suffered so much from erosion since 

 the time of its deposition that only a remnant is now left to indicate 

 its former distribution. It does not exist on the Eastern Shore di- 

 vision of the Atlantic Coastal Plain, but is found as an irregular 

 terrace much dissected by waterways, and seldom exceeding a mile 

 in width, extending from the Susquehanna river to Lesley, and 

 mostly confined between the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore 

 and Baltimore and Ohio railroads. It is also represented by outliers 

 between Iron Hill and Northeast River. On Elk Neck the Sunder- 

 land formation is represented by a few outliers in the vicinity of the 

 Hog Hills and another group of outliers in the vicinity of Elk Neck 

 in the southern half of the peninsula. 



Although the base of the Sunderland formation is somewhat irregu- 



