13 



icut Valley proper and the Springfield Lake basin. (See Springfield 

 to Northampton). 



The New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad crosses the 

 low lying southern end of the Berkshires and enters the Connecticut 

 Valley three miles west of New Haven. East Rock and West Rock 

 are small trap ridges. The railroad then continues over the Tertiary 

 peneplain to Meriden, the trap ridges being mostly to the east. 

 Then it crosses through the ridges and comes out some ten miles 

 south of Hartford into the Springfield Lake bottom, and on over 

 this Lake bottom into Springfield, the trap ridges being now on the 

 west side. (See Springfield to Northampton) . 



COLLECTIONS TO BE SEEN AT AMHERST COLLEGE 



The Hitchcock Collection of fossil footprints is in the basement 

 at the east end. of the Geology-Biology building. It consists of 

 slabs of Triassic sandstone from the Connecticut Valley, on which 

 the tracks of reptiles, insects and worms of the time can still be 

 traced. The tracks were probably made in mud puddles or near 

 them, then baked by the hot sun, and thus hardened so that they 

 were not destroyed when new layers of mud were spread over them. 

 As the process was repeated thousands of feet of sandy muds were 

 piled over the tracks and, when cemented, preserved them. Even 

 the impress of ripple marks and rain drops are preserved. The 

 collection contains over 20,000 tracks representing some forty 

 different kinds of animals. 



The collection of fossil vertebrates is on the first floor at the east 

 end of the Geology-Biology building. The striking forms in this 

 are the evolution of the horse represented by five stages, Eohippus, 

 Mesohippus, Merychippus, Equus Scotti, and the modern horse. 

 There are skeletons of early camels, rhinoceros, dogs, oreodonts, 

 saber-toothed cat, etc., and considerable material from the Miocene 

 and Oligocene periods. Here also is the collection of Oligocene 

 vertebrates from Patagonia of which the Pyrotherium skull is most 

 interesting. 



The historical geological collection is on the second floor of the 

 same building and is arranged in alcoves each alcove to show the 

 typical life of that period. The features of especial note are the 

 history of the Connecticut Valley at the east end of the room, the 

 mastodon skeleton from South Carolina, the evolutionary material 



