New Britain herald., 1916-01-27

ll1SS OI LnaL eEd-SO1n6 Ol WnlCn were very large-wall1ed slowly across the mud flats on their hind legs leaving their three-toed footprints in the ar gillaceous mud and occasionally they died while on this exposed mud. The hot sun baked this layer of clayey mud until it was as hard as soft rock. Later this section becC me flooded and another layer of mud was depositec this time covering up the tracks and the bones of the dead reptiles
 In this manner both the bones of tn ose strange reptiles and their three toed footprints have been preserved in the mud rocks until the present.
 In this age the present New Britain, as we'll as the entire Great Central Lowland, was covered deeper and deeper with gravel, sand, and mud, until it was many hundreds of feet be- low the surface.
 One day, while New Britain was in the depths dreaming of her old rep> tilian friends the Anomospus Scambus and the Podokesaurus HOlyOkensis and of the much missed warm sun- shine, she began to tremble and grow warm. She listened and heard a grooming and rumbling. She grew hot, then hotter, and then still hotter, but always hottest on the west side Just before she became unconscious she looked to the west and there between her and Plainvile plains pushing it. self up and ever up from a seething mass below was mountain of red hot molten rock bubbling, hissing, roaring, and croWding it's way higher and higher through the hundreds of feet of solid rock until it had formed down in the earth the great mass of trap rock, a remnant of which is the range including Sunset Rock, Rattle- snake and Talcott Mountains It did not reach the surface then but 1t pushed the overlying beds of rock up so as to form a long round mountain extending north and south with the present New Britain deep down in the ground on the east slope.
 At the same time New Britain, re- ceived another shock-an earthquake this time-which split the town from it's northeast corner to Shuttle Mead OW reservoir as well as in several other places southeast of this line. These splits, down through the earth nobody knows how far, are called faults. The material on the northwest side re- mained stationary or sank while the
 
 of these faults rose higher This ex- posed northwest walls composed of hard trap rock beneath the overlyin9 sandstone. AS a result of these faults the surface of land far above where New Britain was then was full of high ridges or mountains extending from northwest to the southwest with steep northwest slopes but gentle Southeast slopes.
 Ages passed. Nature wore away the western and the eastern highlands of Connecticut more and more. She also wore the softer sandstone rocks from these New Britain ridges and from the surface between these ridges, When the hard trap rock ridges be- came exposed, Nature attacked them as she could not wear them as rap idly as the softer sandstone which filled the small valleys between the many ridges, they now are the prOmin- ent ridges of trap rock in this Vicin- lty and throughout the great valley from Bristol to Glastonbury.
 Still later all Connecticut was ele- vated. Then the rivers began to run fast again and to carry the material from over New Britain to the west, the north east, and to the southeast. Remnants of these streams still eX- ist. A stream flowed west toward Plainville and eroded the softer rock until it came to the hard trap rock. Then it borrowed it's course and cut the valley called Cooks Gap through this hard material-thus preparing a way for the Highland Division. Other streams extended toward Hartford and Berlin. They still exist. New Brit ain was then and still is a divide.
 At last these streams uncovered the pesent New Britain and New Britain was rescusctted But not for long.
 Soon after this a mass of glacial ice hundreds of feet thick spread south ward from Labrador over Canada and New England to Long Island. Thus New Britain was preserved in cold storage for many years.
 As this glacial ice moved from the north through the deep valleys and over the low hills of New Britain, powders dropped upon 1t from the cliffs and ridges and landslides cov- cred the edges with dirt thus filling the ice with much material the bot tom of the glacier like a great flexible schaper smoothed off the rough places filled in the hollow places, and gave to many of our New Britain hills their characteristic rounded and elongated shape which we call drumlinoids.
 At times the rock material accum- ulated so fast on the surface of the land beneath the glacial ice, that the glacier found it easier to ride over it, thus securing and rounding it, than to push it along, In this way Walnut Hill and the hill at the head of Arch street, were rrobably formed. Such formations are called drumlins and they differ from druminOids in that their material is corfusedly cOm- mingled rock materials of all kinds and sizes and has parallel scratches, due to glacial ice, on it's larger par ticles.
 In n1aceS the sub-glacial streams