60 MASSACHUSETTS AGKICULTURE. 



are questions we propose to answer by this history, and if you 

 pronounce it a fable, please learn the moral. 



Many scientific men believe that there was once a time when 

 the earth in the vicinity of our meridian, as every where else, 

 was like the surface of a cooling smelter's furnace. There was 

 a crust around a central fiery mass, made porous by the evolu- 

 tion of gases through the semi-fluid cooling lava. It was 

 blistered and corrugated and thrown into hills of considerable 

 dimensions, for the moon in that early day as now, had power 

 over the earth, and in her daily rounds dragged after her a tide 

 which ]jroke u^) the solid shell, and formed it into floating 

 islands. The molten surge heaved island upon island, and 

 dashed high up their rocky sides, and in dripj>ing back, cooled 

 in stalactical forms and in congealed cascades. Thus the frag- 

 ments became thickened and cemented together, and the crust 

 roughened by hills and hollows became more permanent. But 

 water existing in a state of vapor, having been driven by heat 

 from the central mass, coming in contact with the cold of the 

 outer spaces, was condensed and fell in showers upon the still 

 almost incandescent crust. Then was hissing, and steaming, 

 and cracking, and crumbling of the brittle, barren cinders into 

 loose debris, while the water itself went off in whirling clouds 

 of steam, carrying with it the heat of the central mass to the 

 cold spaces, and condensing, performed the same evolutions 

 again. 



When the crust became so cooled that the water was permitted 

 to remain upon its surface, it washed the loose fragments from 

 their resting places and strewed them in the bottoms of the 

 valleys, and over the extensive submarine plains between dis- 

 tant mountain coasts. These Ijeds of sediment, pressed by the 

 weight of the superincumbent ocean, prevented the heat from 

 radiating from the subjacent crust, and thus, by the inner fires, 

 the crust was remelted and the sediment recrystalized and 

 formed into solid rock. 



When these, in their turn, were elevated by the forces now 

 deep pent up within the earth, higher hills, larger mountains, 

 more lofty cliffs, and steeper precipices were formed. Then 

 were formed Washington, and Jefferson, and Ascutney, and 

 Monadnock, and Hoosack, and the range beyond Westfield, 

 and the hills that run through Palmer and Monson, on to meet 



