104 The American Geologist. August, looi 
mations have been mapped on the western shore, but it is on the 
eastern shore of Maryland that they attain their most extensive 
development. 
Any sort of detritus which enters into the other terraces 
may be found in the Talbot, but it possesses a g'reater propor- 
tion of loam and a smaller proportion of decayed materials than 
is found in the other members of the series. It also contains 
numerous lenses of 'g'reenish-blue clay, which frequently carry 
plant remains and are regarded as swamp deposits, formed in 
the mouths of ponded streams, and buried by the advancing- 
beach of the Talbot sea. The famous Cornfield Harbor clays, 
carrying remains of marine and brackish water animals, as well 
as similar deposits five miles south of Cedar Point, in the same 
county, are also referred to the Talbot formation. The base 
of the Talbot terrace is irregular, sometimes lying- above tide 
and sometimes below, but the top, where it borders its sea-clifif, 
is usually limited by the 45 or 50-foot contour. 
A large number of terraces are cut in the Wicomico-Talbot 
surfaces by the streams along whose borders they lie, and it 
was not until after many profiles from various and distant re- 
gions had been compared that the 45-foot contour was deter- 
mined to be the one which marked the shore of the Talbot sea. 
The name of this formation is derived from Talbot count}', on 
the eastern shore of Maryland. 
After the deposition of the Talbot terrace, the Coastal Plain 
was elevated somewhat higher than it is today, and remained 
in that position long- enough to permit the rivers which flowed 
across it to cut rather deep channels, and its present position 
indicates a subsidence sufficiently great to drown these rivers 
and many of their predecessors toward their seaward portions. 
The Recent terrace is today building along the shore, and 
cutting its sea-cliff indiscriminately in the Talbot, Wicomico 
and Sunderland formations. 
From the preceding discussion it will be seen then that the 
classification adopted by the Maryland Geologic Survey rec- 
ognizes four distinct mapable terraces in Mar^dand, in place of 
three as represented by Mr. Darton in the region of W'^ashing- 
ton, and differs from him in ascribing the formation of the di- 
vides of the peninsulas of southern Maryland to a fomiation 
younger than that of the Lafayette. Although the Wicomico 
