366 The Aincricmi Geologist. June, i898 
It may be argued that the number of hills reaching to a 
moderately uniform elevation which are found in southeastern 
New England, and in New Jersey, cannot be accounted for by 
this hypothesis. When we take into account their present ir- 
regularity of surface, this asserted uniformity does not appear 
so marked. Upon my mind the impression of irregularity is 
produced iiiuch more strongly than that of regularity, par- 
ticularly when the monadnocks and higher irregularities of 
the northern and western part of New England are included. 
It is true that near the coast the uniformity is more marked 
than in the interior; but here, of course, the mountains would 
have been more lowered than in the interior, and, in the coastal 
region, there may well have been an approach toward the 
condition of a local peneplain. Yet, when we consider such 
isolated elevations as that of the Blue hills, near Boston, and 
the ruggedness of the Maine coast and of Nova Scotia, as 
well as of the region farther north in Labrador, even here, 
where the peneplain condition should have been most fully 
reached, the regularity of level can be urged only when numer- 
ous local exceptions are eliminated. 
However, it is necessary, if this proposed hypothesis is to 
be accepted, to account for even the measure of uniformity that 
exists, even though it is really less marked than some believe. 
In the reduction of a mountain mass toward base level, long 
before the peneplain stage is reached it seems certain that there 
would be a uniformity of level among the mountain crests fully 
as marked as that now found in New England, and that this 
uniformity would naturally be greater near the sea, where 
development would have been most advanced. 
Given a mountain region of marked irregularity, such as 
New England must have been during the Paleozoic, the rocks 
from place to place varied greatly in hardness and in attitude, 
while the peaks in different sections naturally reached to very 
different altitudes. If we should select from these, two neigh- 
boring peaks or ridges of approximately the same texture 
attitude, and altitude, it would follow that, since they were 
exposed to the same climatic conditions, their downwearing 
toward base level would be continued at about the same rate, 
as a general proposition, though, of course, there might, in 
any selected place, be accidents of variations which would in- 
