1889.] 
421 
[Davis and Wood. 
now under consideration, the coast line of Old Jersey has stood 
farther east than the present margin of the Atlantic. In later times, 
submergence and transgression appear to have occurred at least 
once. 
During the depression of the land, as mentioned above, the to- 
pography of the coastal margin of the region must have been much 
like that now presented in Chesapeake bay : an irregular shore 
line, on which the sea waves fretted and from which they carried 
sands and gravels and clays to be spread out a little farther sea- 
ward as late Tertiary or Quaternary strata. The actual shore line 
of this time has not yet been identified, and is therefore probably 
not well defined : it may have shifted from one level to another, 
nowhere enduring long. 
39. The Southern Lowland Plain . — A later subdivision of Mill- 
stone time saw the gravelly and sandy beds raised from the sea floor 
into the Lowland plains of the southeastern and southern portion of 
the state ; and since then, comparatively little work has been done. 
The elevation was distinctly greater in the south than in the north ; 
and hence the plains increase in width in that direction. About 
Long Branch and farther north, they are hardly visible, unless in 
the valleys : here the sea is still at work not far from the line that 
it occupied while the southern plains were forming ; here it has 
straightened out its shore line into a rather mature form. In the 
southern part of the state, there are occasional residual hills, 1 of 
small size and moderate height ; these seem to be remnants of beds 
not wholly destroyed either by subaerial or marine erosion, but 
the time of their deposit is considered to be post-Cretaceous and 
their deposition and erosion may imply oscillations of level not here 
considered. Between these hills, the streams wander over the broad 
plains in the simplest consequent fashion, merely flowing down 
the slopes offered them to the sea. They have cut only shallow val- 
leys, and broad areas between them are untouched. East and 
West plains in Burlington and Ocean counties are surfaces of this 
kind ; they are barren, bare of trees ever since the country has 
been known, but low bushes and dwarf pines and oaks grow in 
places ; an object as tall as a man can be seen here for many miles. 2 
The contoured maps show local gradients of only five or ten feet 
to a mile. A slight depression has estuaried the mouths of the 
streams for a small distance all along the coast and up Delaware 
1 Geol. N. J., 1886, 133. 2 Geol. N. J., 1868, 78. 
