332 Glacial Phe?wmena of Canada, 



of the river numerous moutonnies surfaces strike the eye, while 

 boulders strew its sides and the surface of Staten Island in the 

 harbour of New-York, — all attesting, thus far south, the undimi- 

 nished energy of glacial action. 



Near Boston, gneissic rocks show the same signs ; and at Rox- 

 bury, on the outskirts of the city, large surfaces of perfectly mou- 

 tonnee Red Sandstone conglomerate were pointed out to me by Dr. 

 Gould, who informed me that, when he first took Agassiz to the 

 same spot, he at once recognized their ice-smoothed character. The 

 water-worn pebbles of quartz have been ground quite flat on their 

 upper surfaces, and stand slightly out from the rock, the softer 

 sandy matrix of which has yielded to the influence of the weather. 



The same kinds of indications are strong in all those parts of 

 Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont, through which I 

 passed. There, as in the other places previously mentioned, the 

 country is much covered with clay, sand, gravel, and boulders, 

 partly rounded and apparently chiefly derived from neighbouring 

 formations. Far transported boulders may be more scarce among 

 these mountains, their height having partly barred the transport 

 of floating material from the Laurentine Chain, whereas the broad 

 plains south of the lakes were more open to the ice drifting from 

 the north. In the above-named States, instances of fresh and of 

 decaying ice-worn and striated rocks are of constant occurence in 

 the low ground ; and it is truly marvellous to see the same rounded 

 contours rising in the mountains to the very top, — again remind- 

 ing the traveller of the ice-moulded surfaces of the south-west of 

 Ireland, of the Highlands of Scotland, and of part of Wales. In 

 none of these American localities are there, however, any signs of 

 pre-existing glaciers, such as are frequent in the mountainous parts 

 of the British Isles. 



I am unable to throw any new light on the perplexing question 

 of the glacial phenomena of the Canaan Hill.*. These have been 

 described by Dr. Hitchcock and Sir Charles Lyell. The range 

 lies on the east side of the Hudson, about twenty miles south-east 

 of Albany, and forms part of the Green Mountains, which are an 

 intermediate part of the long chain that, commencing on the 

 south with the Alleghany Mountains, trends north-easterly to the 

 Mountains of Notre-Dame and Gaspe, on the south shore of the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the District of Canaan and Richmond, 

 their average strike is nearly north and south, the rocks consisting 

 of that part of the Silurian series which ranges between the 



