Geology Of The Boston Area Massachusetts Classic Reprint

Excerpt from Geology of the Boston Area, Massachusetts The area herein described, which lies between parallels 42° 15' and 42° 30' and extends westward from the shore of Massachusetts Bay to meridian 71° comprises the Boston and Boston Bay quadrangles and has a land area, including marshes and islands, of 240 square miles. It is situated in eastern Massachusetts (see fig. 1) and includes nearly all of Suffolk County and parts of Middlesex, Essex, Norfolk, and Plymouth Counties. The city of Boston occupies the south-central part of the area. In this bulletin, for convenience, the two quadrangles will be designated by the term Boston area. This is not the same as the Boston district, which comprises the Boston Basin and the adjacent territory in which the geology is closely related, so that it forms a sort of unit having distinctive geologic characters that differ in some respects from those of the surrounding areas. The limits of the Boston district are not well defined, but it extends several miles outside the Boston area on the north, southwest, and south and includes about twice as much territory. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Boston Through the Ages: The Geological Story of Greater Boston It is such stories that Mr. Crosby hr. Oven into a series of chapters, written in a style at simple and truthful. His broad training, obtained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Columbia Universities, and through association in engineering problems with his father, W. O. Crosby, is seen in his choice of subjects and in their scientific treatment. Mr. Crosby has here given us what has long been needed, a small, readable, truthful book on the lands and shores of Boston and vicinity. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Geology and Early History of the Boston Area of Massachusetts: A Bicentennial Approach The softest Boston rocks are argillite (related to slate and shale but harder) and volcanic ash. The argillite was originally de posited as clay in either a lake or marine embayment; the volcanic ash was blown out Of the many volcanoes that were active in the area during the time the clay or mud was being deposited. Gravel was interlayered with the clay and cemented into a hard rock called conglomerate, locally called puddingstone. This rock crops out widely in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Brookline. Also interlayered with these sediments were volcanic flows, ashes, cin ders, and the great variety of deposits formed by volcanoes. These deposits - now hard rock - are best seen in nearby Mattapan, Hyde Park, Milton, Lynn, and Saugus. Hundreds of millions of years have elapsed Since these deposits were laid down, and the ash and mud not only has been com pressed, cemented, and solidified into rock, it has also been deeply buried by later deposits and drawn deeper into the Earth's interior, where it was squeezed, folded, broken, and turned up on end. Today, these badly distorted rocks are at the surface again only because of the erosion Of the many thousands of feet of rock that once overlay them. What was the ancient landscape like at the time the Boston rocks were being laid down? In all probability, the region was a broad lowland surrounded by hills or mountains of granite. A large body of water, either a large lake or perhaps an arm of the sea, occupied part of the lowland. Small volcanoes and at least one large conethat rose a mile or more in height dotted the plain and surround ing uplands. The ash from these volcanoes blanketed the plain and was carried by the rivers to the lake or sea where it mixed with silt and clay that was being carried by rivers from the upland. The rivers descending onto the plain from the surrounding high lands also carried gravel, which was deposited in flood plains and which makes up much of the Roxbury puddingstone. This landscape of remote Paleozoic time can be matched with landscapes existing today. One can see similarities in the Puget Sound lowland and the nearby Cascades in the State of Washing ton; the Sacramento Valley, with Marysville Buttes and Mounts Shasta and Lassen in the distance; the Imperial Valley, at the head of the Gulf of California depression, where volcanic centers existed until very recent time; the PO River Plain in northern Italy, where a volcanic center existed not long ago near Rimini; and many of the great rift valleys of Africa that contain deep lakes and nearby active volcanoes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from Contributions to the Geology of Eastern Massachusetts Early in the summer of 1875 I began a systematic study of the rocks in this vicinity, with the view of collecting such data as, added to my previous knowledge, would enable me to prepare a thesis for graduation in the department of Natural History of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on the "Geology of the Environs of Boston." In the beginning of the following winter I was charged by Prof. A. Hyatt, under the direction of the Massachusetts Commission to the Centennial Exhibition, with the task of preparing a geological map of the State, for exhibition at Philadelphia. Opportunity was afforded me by the Commission to visit all parts of the State. The Boston Society of Natural History generously permitted the use of my time as assistant in their Museum for this purpose, and, as that winter was unusually favorable for exploration, I was in the field almost constantly. The Centennial map and the report on the same were completed in the following spring. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Geology of Worcester, Massachusetts The printing of this volume was authorized by the Worcester Natural History Society at a regular meeting held April 30, 1902. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Role of geology in important events that took place around Boston 200 years ago.