SOILS OF MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT. 3 
ducing a gently rolling surface. Dissection of this plateau through 
a long period of time has been so pronounced that the existing sur- 
face is extremely irregular. It is a succession of much worn-down 
knobs and hills, with narrow intervening valleys. The hills are 
multi formed. Some are steep, and others not only steep but small, 
thus rendering cultivation expensive. Others, however, are dome- 
shaped, or at least sufficiently regular and smooth to afford many 
good farming areas and sites for orchards. 1 The higher parts con- 
sist of isolated hills or chains of hills, with much less definite direc- 
tion than those of the Highland section adjoining on the west, 
where the trend ranges from north and south to northeast and 
southwest, as in all of both States farther west. The dome-shaped 
hills that frequently characterize this section are much more rare in 
the Western Plateau. The northern part of the Eastern Plateau 
is drained by the Merrimac River, of which the two principal 
branches are the Concord and the Nashua Rivers. Much of the 
Concord River basin is drained by its two important branches, the 
Sudbury and the Assabet Rivers. The southern part of the region 
is drained by the Charles, the Blackstone, and the French Rivers. 
THE EASTERN HIGHLAND. 
The Eastern Highland extends from the Eastern Plateau to the 
Connecticut Valley Basin. Its general slope is southerly, and the 
general range in elevation, barring exceptionally low and exception- 
ally high points, is from TOO to 1,200 feet. The high hills are some- 
what broader in the northern part than in the southern, a fact which 
undoubtedly led in colonial days to the establishment of villages on 
several of these elevations ranging in altitude from 1,000 to 1,200 
feet. Some of the villages in such locations are Shutesbury, Wendell, 
New Salem, Prescott, Pelham, Petersham, Phillipston, Templeton, 
Rutland, Oakham, New Braintree, Wilmington, Mansfield, Gilead, 
and Winchester. 
The drainage of the Eastern Highland is mostly to the west and 
to the southwest. In the northern part Millers River rises in the 
vicinity of Gardner, flows due west, and enters the Connecticut near 
Millers Falls. In the central part the Swift, the Ware, and the 
Quabaug Rivers have their sources. These streams flow together at 
the town of Three Rivers, forming the Chicopee River, which enters 
the Connecticut at Chicopee. The extreme southeastern part of the 
1 The apple census of Massachusetts prepared by the State board of agriculture for the 
year 1905 shows the highest producing areas to be in those sections where this dome- 
shaped topography is most characteristic. This is an adaptation to conditions of topog- 
raphy and soil that had gradually come to be apparent, as the deepest and most pro- 
ductive soils of each section in southern New England are usually located in this favor- 
able topographic position. Erosion also is not serious and tillage is relatively economical. 
