1(5 TACONIC PHYSIOGRAPHY. 
England is a worn-out mountain range. * * * the divide between Conne 
ticut and Champlain drainage in Vermont appears to lie on the northei 
extension of the western upland of Massachusetts ; and the peaks of the Gree 
Mountains ar6 presumably monadnocks, like Greylock and Mount Ever! 
farther south. * * * the evidence leading to the belief in the uplift of tt 
old peneplain is found entirely in the form of the region itself.o 
He also pointed out that the evidence from the present altitude o 
fossi lifer ous rocks is inconclusive, because it does not show whethe 
that altitude was the result of original deformation or of later uplift. 
In 189G-98 Tarr published his physical geography of the Taconi 
province and the Hudson River, in which he states: 
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Before the dawn of the Paleozoic time mountains existed in New Englam 
and New Jersey, as well as in the States south of here. The sea which bathe* 
the Adirondacks also beat against the foot of these more eastern moun 
tains. * * * Remains of these mountains are still left in various parts o 
New England, where they form mountains of true Adirondack type. By thei 
long-continued denudation, sedimentary deposits were furnished to the interioi J 
sea, and during the Cambrian and Lower Silurian periods the waste of this 
mountainous land and of the Adirondacks was strewn over the sea bottom 
partly within the boundaries of the State of New York. * * * The close o1 
the Lower Silurian was marked by a regrowth of these eastern mountains; bin 
the new rock-folding involved a part of the old sea bed, and * * * at the 
same time caused a new development of mighty mountain ranges in westeri 
New England * * * and eastern New York. Folds of great complexity 
and faults of marked extent raised the ocean sediment into lofty mountains. 
* * * Denudation has etched these complexly altered and folded strata., 
and since they were originally deposited as sheets of sediment, though nowv 
greatly changed, the folding has placed them in such a position that, like the 
Appalachians, they have been carved into ridges. But the complexity of the- 
rock structure and position is greater than in the Appalachians, and hence the 
ridges are not long and continuous, but short and choppy, with many inter- 
mediate peaks. This is the typical Berkshire type. There is a mixture of the 
sedimentary and crystalline habit: hence, in general, the mountains extend in i 
ridges that run parallel to the lines of folding (generally about north and south 
in New England and New Jersey) ; but we can not follow the ridges for any 
considerable distance. The difference between Appalachian and Berkshire 
types of mountains is quite like the difference between the well-developed 
ocean swell and the deep, wind-broken waves of the billowy sea. c 
In 1899 the writer described the general physical features of about 
700 square miles of Washington County, N. Y., and of Rutland and 
Bennington counties, Vt., from latitude 43° to 43° 45' and from the 
Taconic Range about 10 miles westward. The north-northwest 1 
trend of that range north of the Castleton cut was attributed to a j 
change in the strike. The irregular surface forms west of the range 
were attributed to the unequal operation of erosion on materials of! 
such unequal hardness as quartzite, limestone, slate, and shale, and to 
" Davis, W. M., The physical geography of southern New England : National Geog. 
Mon. of Nat. Geog. Soc. No. !». vol. 1, t89r>, pp. 279, 283, 284. 
" Op. eit., p. 294. 
'' Tarr, Ralph S., The physical geography of New York State : Bull. Am. Geog. Sbc, 
vol. 29, 1897, pp. 26-29. 
