WANTED: a name applicable to those broken, rugged regions that have been developed by the normal processes of denudation from the once continuous surface of a plain or peneplain. The name should be if possible homologous with the words, _plain_, _peneplain_ and _pastplain_; it should be of simple, convenient and euphonious form; it must be satisfactory to many other persons than its inventor; and its etymological construction should not be embarrassed by the attempt to crowd too much meaning into it. The mere suggestion that it was once a plain and that it is now maturely diversified will suffice. * * * * * The topography of northern New Jersey is therefore, like its structure, polygenetic. It exhibits very clearly a series of forms developed under three different geographic cycles, and closer search will doubtless discover forms belonging to yet other cycles, less complete and of briefer duration than these three. There is the tilted and deeply eroded peneplain of the Highlands, whose initial form may be called the Schooley peneplain, from the distinct exhibition of one of its remnants on Schooley's mountain; this was the product of Jurassic and Cretaceous denudation. There is the younger central baselevelled plain, developed during Tertiary time, or thereabouts, on the weaker Triassic and Cretaceous beds; and the associated valleys of the same age that have been sunk into the weakest rocks of the Highlands. There are the shallow valleys in the Central plain, of the latest post-tertiary cycle, requiring the name of this region to be changed from plain, as it was lately, to pastplain, as it is now. The first cycle, in which the Schooley peneplain was produced, witnessed the accomplishment of a great work; it included in its later part, besides various other oscillations, the sub-cycle when the seaward or southeastern part of the peneplain was gently submerged and buried to a slight depth under Cretaceous deposits. The second cycle was shorter; being a time sufficient to baselevel the softer beds, but not seriously to consume the harder parts of the pre-existing surface. We are still in the third cycle, of which but a small part has elapsed. The question with which this essay opened may now be taken up. The streams and rivers of northern New Jersey may be examined, with the intention of classifying them according to their conditions of origin, to their degree of complexity as indicated by the number of geographic cycles through which they have lived, and to the advance made toward their mature adjustment.