totally disappeared today, except for occasional patches cut for mulch. Marshes are also important habitat for blue crabs, ducks, and other delectable creatures. Mud flats are home to soft-shell clams (steamers) and hard-shell clams (littlenecks or quahogs), which are still harvested commercially to a small degree.

Probably the most important function of Connecticut's salt marshes is their contribution to the support of the entire Long Island Sound ecologic grocery store. When a grass in a marsh dies, much of the plant decomposes, producing small flakes of nutrients that are circulated throughout the Sound by tidal currents. The effect, when combined with river sediment that did not wind up in marshes and mud flats, is to create a kind of fluid "soil.' This soil is consumed primarily by plankton, microscopic plants and animals that lie at the base of a complex pyramid of consuming animals - including man. Thus, when one partakes of Long Island Sound flounder, one is indirectly eating plankton, salt-marsh grasses, and tidal river mud.

A scattering of small islands embroiders the coastline as well, contributing to the popularity of the Coast. The principal groups are the Thimble Islands off Branford and the Norwalk Islands, rationally enough off Norwalk. There are also the Captain Islands near Greenwich, the Fish Islands of Darien, and Mason Island off Stonington. Charts for Long Island Sound are also filled with indications of almost-islands: rocks, reefs, ledges, and hammocks. These navigational hazards that litter the near-shore regions are frequently tagged with colorful names: Hookers Rock, Hens and Chickens Reef, Pork Rocks, Moon Rock, Democrat Rock, and Vixen Ledge.

The Fish Islands, Mason Island, and many of the other islands and almost-islands are obdurate knobs of bedrock, former hilltops of the Coastal Slope that jutted out too far to remain part of the mainland after rising ocean waters flooded the Coast. Falkner's Island, the Norwalk Islands, and the Captain Islands - irregular dollops of sand and boulders - are primarily glacial in origin. The Thimbles owe their existence to both bedrock and glacial factors.

The glacial deposit responsible for so many of Connecticut's coastal islands is called a recessional moraine, a close relative of a terminal

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