374 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



to be in place close by, certainly less than half a mile, if indeed we 

 did not find it in place." 



Your conjectures were rig^ht. Had you turned and gone up the 

 north branch of the Wassattiquoik a little way into township 4, in 

 the 9th range, you would have found the site from which the bould- 

 ers you saw started. It is the first locality, or cropping out of 

 this belt of the lower Ilelderberg formation, east of Mt. Katahdin.* 



I was not able to give this locality a personal examination, but 

 obtained reliable description of its location from a person f who 

 had visited the spot, clambered over the bluff it formed on the 

 bank of the stream, and who showed me specimens of the rock iden- 

 tical in their composition and structure with the rock which I 

 visited last year in Murch's lake, in the next township north-east 

 of this, (No. 5, R. 8.) 



Considering its geological position and surroundings this locality 

 is one of peculiar interest, situated as it is almost at the base of 

 Katahdin, with its granite battlements guarding it on the west and 

 south — the trap rocks of the Lunksoos range on the north, and the 

 quartz rock of the Maine Wassattiquoik on the east. I leave it to 

 you and other geologists to decide the seniority of age and priority 

 of occupation of these several formations, and to explain by what 

 arrangements of nature this rock, so full of the remains of organic 

 life, was placed in almost juxtaposition with such azoic neighbors. 

 The one, full of tangible proofs of an age teeming with aquatic 

 animal and vegetable life, and exhibiting through its structure the 

 outward forms and shapes of former living tenants of an ocean in 

 which they existed, and from which they drew their sustenance. 

 The others, the ver}"- reverse of this — hard, crystalline in feature — 

 silent as to any definite condition of the past — giving no sign of 

 any association with life at any period — their clearest manifesta- 

 tions being those of an escape from heat of great intensity^ and of 

 convulsive earthquakes which have shaken and shivered the neigh- 

 boring mountains and scattered their rough and angular fragments 

 on every side. Whatever may be the theoretic speculations on 

 this subject, one thing is certain. When the advance of settlement 

 up the Penobscot shall bring mankind in greater numbers into this 

 Bection, and the accumulations of thrift and industry shall enable 



* This is undoubtedly the belt of rock from which the boulders of fine statuary 

 marble discovered in 18G], were derived. C. H. H. 



t Mr. David Malcolm of Patten. 



