Branner.] 350 [Feb. 10, 



others are on the water-shed near Uplinger's, in the south-west end of the 

 basin. They are in the fields near the road, and are visible from it. The 

 largest of these is nearly round in outline, from ten to fifteen feet deep, 

 and about seventy-five feet wide. The smallest one is oval, and about 

 twenty-five feet wide, while the intermediate one lies nearest the road and 

 is pear-shaped in outline. 



Boulders. 



Large boulders are common throughout the valley, but especially so 

 along the sides and top of the mountain that bounds the south-eastern 

 side of the basin. They are generally of Pottsville conglomerate, and 

 have been brought, at farthest, only across from the outcrop of this forma- 

 tion along the north-western rim, and left stranded where they now stand. 

 Most of them are angular, and show few or no signs of glacial wearing. 

 The largest seen by the writer are grouped together two and three-quarter 

 miles due south-east of Peckville, but within the outcrop of the conglom- 

 erate, on the side of the basin. They are about 8'X 10'XlO', some larger 

 and some smaller. Judging from their thickness and general appearance, 

 their position and the course of the ice hereabout, they appear to have 

 been carried up hill from the outcrop of conglomerate along the edge of a 

 small valley about a thousand feet to the north east of where they now 

 stand. Smaller boulders, both of conglomerate and Pocono sandstone, 

 are also widely distributed in this region, while they are especially common 

 in some of the little hollows that head high up the sides of the mountains 

 on the east. Here they lie heaped together promiscuously. These frag- 

 ments are also local, and generally angular, being but little worn, or not 

 worn at all, as if they had been brought here upon the surface of 

 the ice. When boulders are found heaped together in this way lower 

 down in the valley, they are invariably worn by ice, or water, or both. A 

 striking example of this kind is exposed in the shallow cut along a branch 

 of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western railway where it runs in 

 toward Dolph's breaker, near Jessup. Here boulders from one to three 

 feet in diameter, and well rounded, are heaped together in the greatest 

 confusion, and often without enough sand and gravel to fill the spaces be- 

 tween them. 



Soil, as Affected by Glaciation. 



While the soils of drift-covered regions are frequently very fertile, 

 those of the Wyoming and Lackawanna valleys are, for the most part, poor. 

 The principal exceptions to this are the narrow, broken strips of alluvial 

 lands along the Lackawanna river from just below Carbondale to its 

 mouth, and the broad bottom lands of the Susquehanna. The finer ma- 

 terial of the drift generally being spread out over the south-west end of 

 the valley, and the coarser in the north-east end, the country below 

 Wilkes-Barre is, on the whole, better adapted to agriculture than that 

 along the Lackawanna. The reason for the prevailing barrenness of the 



