Ii. S. Lull — Life of the Connecticut Trias. 401 



which the mass of sediment and volcanic rocks was divided into 

 great blocks, often extending north and south. The blocks 

 slipped one past another along nearly vertical planes. In these 

 dislocations the strata were generally tilted eastward. . . . 

 In these movements, associated perhaps with general uplift of 

 the area, the bay became land and the rocks were exposed to 

 erosion." 



A view of the deposition of the Newark rocks more in keep- 

 ing with the organic phenomena is that set forth hj Davis in 

 1898 (pp. 32, 33) as follows : 



"The pre-Triassic peneplain might have been warped so as 

 to alter the action of the quiescent old rivers that had before 

 flowed across it, yet not to drown or to pond them. Such a 

 change would set the streams to eroding in their steepened 

 courses, and to depositing where their load increased above 

 their ability of transportation. As with marine or lacustrine 

 deposits, the thickness of the strata thus produced would 

 depend on the duration of the opportunity for their deposition. 

 A progressive warping, always raising the eroded districts and 

 depressing the area of deposition, would in any of these cases 

 afford the condition for accumulating strata of great total 

 thickness. The heavy accumulations of river-borne waste on 

 the broad plains of California, of the Po, or of the Indo-Gan- 

 getic depression, all agree in testifying that rivers may form 

 extensive stratified deposits, and that the deposits may be fine 

 as well as coarse. They are characteristically cross bedded 

 and variable, and they may frequently contain rain-pitted or 

 sun-cracked layers. . . . 



"In contrast to marine deposits, Penck has suggested the 

 name 'continental' for deposits formed on land areas, whether 

 in lakes, by rivers, by winds, under the creeping action of 

 waste slopes, or under all these conditions combined. This 

 term seems more applicable than any other to the Triassic 

 deposits of Connecticut. It withdraws them from necessary 

 association with a marine origin, for which there is no suffi- 

 cient evidence, and at the same time it avoids what is to-day an 

 impossible task — that of assigning a particular origin to one or 

 another member of the formation. A continental origin of 

 the formation would accord with Dana's conclusion that the 

 Triassic beds 'are either fresh-water or brackish-water deposits.' 

 There may possibly be included an occasional marine deposit 

 along the axis of the depressed trough, for at one time or 

 another a faster movement of depression than usual may have 

 outstripped deposition and thus caused submergence ; but, in 

 the absence of marine fossils, the burden of proof must lie on 

 those who directly maintain the occurrence of marine de- 

 posits." 



