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the primeval lakes and seas. Through these vast deposits great 
rivers and their tributaries have cut meandering channels, forming 
the celebrated canons, and affording scenery which surpasses the 
visions of poets and dreamers. It would be difficult to conceive 
of anything more different, either geologically or physiographic- 
ally, from all this than the strata of our vicinity. Not only have 
the beds been subjected to metamorphic processes which have 
greatly affected their molecular composition and structure, but 
they have been so powerfully disturbed that it is very difficult to 
find a horizontal layer at this end of Narragansett Bay, and after 
these changes, these wave shaped rock masses were eroded and 
planed down to their present form by stream and glacier, leaving 
us at the last but faulted and contorted pediments, one-half of 
which are under water. 
Perhaps the most striking evidence of stratigraphical disturb¬ 
ance in this region is afforded by the “ Paradise ” rocks where, 
as shown in a former paper, some 750' of quartzyte conglomerate 
have been folded so as to form a ruptured anticlinal and a corre¬ 
sponding synclinal. Among the less striking but equally impor¬ 
tant facts of this class may be mentioned the following: 
Slickensides . These occur along the “cliffs” between the 
layers. At Ochre Point the schists dip about 45 0 , and are crossed 
by slickenside planes dipping about 8o°. At the Portsmouth coal 
mines graphitic coal and slate occur highly polished by friction. 
The unequal flexure which must result from the folding of a 
mass of strata, necessarily causes friction between the strata. 
When slickensidesAross the stratification, faulting has, of course, 
occurred. 
Minute Plications. These include folds in schist or slate so 
minute that the distance from the crest of one fold to that of 
another measures not more than one or one-half inch. Such pli¬ 
cated schists occur at Point of Tree Beach on the west side of 
Newport Neck, also on Brown’s Point in Little Compton, where 
it affects argillaceous and chloritic rocks, also on the west shore 
of Mackerel Cove. Such small plications may be due to the 
same cause as the large folds, but possibly only to the gravity of 
tilted semiplastic beds. 
Larger Plications. An interesting specimen of this lies on 
the west shore of Mackerel Cove on Conanicut. A piece of finely 
