Prioo.] ^t)4 [March 3, 17, & 



Possessions, Ohio and states west and south westward were under water, 

 and the currents and iocs of the Artie Ocean had full sweep over those 

 areas, wo have the conditions to account for all the phenomena witnessed, 

 without resorting to tiie extremely abnormal aiusc of a continental ice-sheet. 

 The dej>ression of New England Professor Winchell speaks of in this wise: 

 "The higher summits only held their heads above the eareeriug waves: 

 deposits, bearing the marks of oceanic action reach to an elevation of six 

 thousiind feet on Blount Washington, two thousand or more on the Green 

 Mountains, and three thousand on Mouadnock." p. 229. If these measure- 

 ments had the same sea-datum then their differences record the differences 

 of the mountain depressions, or rather the elevations the}' had then attained. 

 The siuue height on Mount Washington is that given by Agassiz us the high- 

 est elevation of the ice excoriation; Journey, 425; and that being the great- 

 est ocean height, the conclusion is clear, that it was the edge of ice-sheets 

 that made them, and these ct)uld only be floi\ting ice; certainly not stones in 

 the bottom of a continental ice sheet. The inference must furtlier be that 

 as the sea thus registered the greatest depression, or want of elevation of 

 each mountain. Mount Washington had been four thous<\nd feet lower than 

 the Green Mountains, iuid three thousand feet lower than ]Monadnock; so 

 that there was such depth of water over the valleys and plains as that the 

 Arctic Sea could flow over them, floating either ice-bergs, or belt, or 

 surface rafts of ice. The land it was that was unstable, while the sea kept 

 its level. The supiwsed gigantic ice sheet needed not to be fifteen or ten 

 thousiind feet, or so many hundred feet in thickness, to make those moun- 

 tain grooves, when the mountains stoojK'd nearly to the level of the sea, 

 or their tops had but peeretl above the water. All were not equally low, 

 otherwise the highest grooves in all would have had the same level. And 

 so a continental ice-sJieet moving on the land already elevated should have 

 scored them at nearly the same level; in either way showing that the moun- 

 tains had not been sunk ecjually, or that they had risen unequally. Tlie 

 submergence of New England, with an open interior sea to the pole cer- 

 tainly shows an easier wa}- of accounting for the ice grooves upon the 

 mountains, than to mLse a land mountain at the north pole, and an ice- 

 mountain upon the top of that, with a refrigeration to keep the sheet of the 

 thickness often to fifteen thousand feet in the "Granite State." 



Wiiilc tli(;re are tiie ice grooves of New England and elsewhere to be ac- 

 counted for ; and tliese sharply cut, and geologically recH?nt, there seem to 

 bs other things visible on the surface quite incompatible with the supposi- 

 tion of a c-ontinental glacier of the thickness imagined. The hills of New 

 England, under such a j)ower should have been more leveled down ; for a 

 glacier kepi iiardly fi-o/.en could not liave much vistH)sity ; it should have 

 crushed the stones into the moraine profonde ; should have csxrried few- 

 angular erratics, for the mountains to furnish them would be "few and far 

 between," with comparative small elevation. But what do we see there? 

 Huge luHikiers ; rocking boulders ; i)erched up rocks, that would not have 

 been there after such a planing with the gigantic polar-ice plane ; and a 



