1872.] , W25 [Perry. 
blocks of ice, loosened and detached from the end of the wasting 
ice-sheet, would float’ off, and act in their appropriate way, on a 
greater or less scale, in the form of ice-rafts and limited bergs. 
In this wise, no doubt, a large deposition was made in places, at 
many different points in New Eneland. The deposit consists, as 
may be inferred from what has been said, largely of clay, though in 
various localities it is of sand; it is also stratified, in some spots very 
evenly, in others irregularly, on which account perhaps most geolo- 
gists have regarded it as marine. This formation, along what is now 
the sea-board, is very readily, (as it has been perhaps by Professor 
Dana in the New Haven region), mistaken for an oceanic deposit. 
A similar mistake has been very generally, if not uniformly, made in 
respect both to the horizontal and the sloping terraces, which occur 
in the Massachusetts, as well as in the more northerly portions of the 
Connecticut River Valley, in portions also of the basin of Lake 
Champlain, and in other parts of the Eastern States. The exami- 
nation which I have been able to give to the Albany clays, and to 
the sands in the same neighborhood, disposes me to consider them 
as largely, if not altogether, of the same age, and of a like origin. 
A somewhat careful study of the terraces in the Connecticut River 
Valley, at various points, and particularly at Brattleboro and Bel- 
lows Falls, has led me to substantially the same conclusion in regard 
to most of them. It should be borne in mind that these deposits 
never contain marine remains, and that some of them also occur in 
valleys, and cover comparatively broad plateaus, at considerable and 
ereatly varying heights above the ocean. The clay beds, for in- 
stance, are found in the basin of Lake Memphremagog, some 775 feet 
above the existing level of the sea. In a word, these beds if I under- 
stand the evidence, are clearly a fresh-water deposit, and should not 
be accounted, as they more usually have been, of marine origin. 
This view gives a somewhat different phase to the matter from 
that presented by Professor Dana, in that he aseribes the main work 
of these times to a kind of action which must have been very subor- 
dinate at the best, and from the fact that he refers a great deal that 
was then done to marine agency. He says, “the region was moulded 
at surface largely by the action of the Connecticut valley glacier and 
its underflowing streams.” This statement being a part of the title 
of his paper, is supposed to indicate a erand portion of the work. 
That the region about New Haven “ was moulded at surface largely” 
by the great ice-sheet, is no doubt true; that it was so shaped by a 
