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Art. XII.--[[underlined]] On the Tertiary Strata of the Islands of Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts [[/underlined]]; by Charles Lyell, Esq., V.P.G.S., &c.*

The most northern limit to which the tertiary strata bordering the Atlantic have been traced in the United States, is in Massachusetts, in Martha's Vineyard,lat. 41° 20' north, an island about twenty miles in length from east to west, and about ten from north to south, and rising to the height of between two and three hundred feet above the sea. The tertiary strata of this island are, for the most part, deeply buried beneath a mass of drift, in which lie huge erratic blocks of granite and other rocks, which appear to have come from the north, probably from the mountains of New Hampshire. The tertiary strata consist of white and green sands, a conglomerate, white, blue, yellow, and blood-red clays, and black layers of lignite, all inclined at a high angle to the northeast, and in some of their curves quite vertical.  They are finely exposed near Chilmark on the southwest side of the island, and in the promontory of Gay Head at its southwestern extremity, where there is a vertical section of more than two hundred feet in height.
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^[[*]]From the Proceedings of the London Geol.Soc.Vol.IV No. 92

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