3 i2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



But to whatever cause we attribute the phenomena of the superficial 

 detritus of the fourth district, the whole surface has been permanently covered 

 by water, for it seems impossible that partial inundations could have produced 

 the uniform character and disposition of the materials which we find spread 

 over the surface. 



Under the caption 'Description of a Singular Case of Dispersion 

 of Blocks of Stone Connected with the Drift, in Berkshire County, 

 Mass.,' Dr. Edward Hitchcock came forward in the American Journal 

 of Science for 1845 with a description of that remarkable train of 

 boulders extending from Fry's Hill in the Canaan Mountains of New 

 York, southeasterly into Massachusetts for a distance of some fifteen 

 or twenty miles, which have since become more generally known as 

 the Richmond Boulder Train. The lithological nature of the boulders 

 was such that they could be traced to a common source and were de- 

 scribed as forming three somewhat meandering trains, extending from 

 Fry's Hill, through the adjoining valley, and upwards over an elevation 

 of eight hundred feet at the state line, across the Richmond valley, 

 over Lenox Mountain, six hundred feet in height, to and over Beartown 

 Mountain, one thousand feet in height. Naturally, so striking a phe- 

 nomenon excited investigation, and, naturally, too, Dr. Hitchcock, in 

 the then existing condition of knowledge, found difficulty in accounting 

 for the same. He recognized the similarity of the trains to the lateral 

 moraines described by Agassiz, but he could not conceive of a glacier 

 traveling directly across the intervening ridges, even were there moun- 

 tains in the vicinity of sufficient altitude to give rise to the same. 

 Neither did the consideration of river drift or floating ice afford him 

 a satisfactory conclusion: 



In short, I find so many difficulties on any supposition which I may make 

 that I prefer to leave the case unexplained until more analogous facts have 

 been observed. 



Unsatisfactory and apparently unimportant as this paper may at 

 first thought seem, it is questionable if the contribution were not 

 worthy of greater commendation than the one put forward three years 

 later by the Rogers brothers, to which I now refer. 



According to the descriptions given, the trains start, each from its 

 particular depression in the summit of a high ridge in Canaan, N. Y. 

 Taking a direction south 35° east, they cross the higher ridges and 

 their intervening valleys, the longer for a distance of twenty miles and 

 the shorter for ten miles. The individual trains are none of them 

 more than three hundred or four hundred feet in breadth and not over 

 half a mile asunder. The transported blocks of all sizes up to twenty 

 feet in diameter, sharply angular, free from scratches, and all of the 

 same lithological nature, identical with that of the ridge whence 

 they start. That such a dispersion of boulders from a single point 

 should have taken place regardless of contours is certainly enough to 

 excite the interest of any one. It is the means invoked by the two 

 workers which have excited our wonder, however. 



