The Drift or Boulder Formation. 325 



\n Switzerland, tlioiisands of huge blocks of granite have been 

 transported from one ridge of mountains to another, across the 

 wide and deep valley that separates them, with so little injury 

 that their anMes are not at all worn. This is the most remark- 

 able of all the known localities of erratic stones. The Alps are 

 here separated from the Jura Mountains by a distance of 30 miles 

 between their bases, but the distance between the highest points 

 of these two chains is 80 miles. The Jura is of secondary lime- 

 stone, and yet upon its slopes, 800 feet above the level of the lake 

 of Neufchatel, which lies in the valley below, there is a long lino 

 of granitic blocks extending for miles, and consisting of a material 

 only found in the distant chain of the Alps. Professor Forbes 

 states of these, that " wherever seen they fill the mind with 

 astonishment, when it is recollected that as a matter of certainty 

 these vast rocks, larger than no mean cottages, have been 

 removed from the distant peaks of the Alps, visible in dim per- 

 spective amidst the eternal snows, at the very instant we stand on 

 their debris. The most notable of these masses, called the Pierre 

 a Bot (or Toad Stone,) lies in a belt of Avood not far from a farm 

 house, about two mdes west of Neufchatel, and near the road to 

 Vallengin and La-Chaux-de-Fonds. The first height above the 

 lake being gained, (vine clad on its lower slopes,) we come 

 rather abruptly upon a small cultivated terrace, where the farm 

 house just mentioned is situated. This hollow in the hill permits 

 some accumulation in the soil, which elsewhere is very thin and 

 bare. Immediately behind, however, the hill again rises, covered 

 with thick wood, in every part of which not a few, but hundreds 

 and thousands of travelled blocks may be found. Some small and 

 rounded, but a vast number exceeding a cubic yard in contents, 

 and perfectly angular, or at least with only the corners and edo-es 

 slightly worn, but without any appearance whatever of considera- 

 ble attrition, or of any violence having been used in their trans- 

 port. Indeed such violence would be quite inconsistent with 

 their appearance and present position. 



" The dimensions of the Pierre a Bot are 50 feet long, 20 wide, 

 and 40 high, containing 40,000 cubic feet (French.) It froms a 

 stupendous monument of power. It is impossible to look at it 

 without emotion, after surveying the distance which separates it 

 from its birth place. No wonder that Geologists have vied with 

 one another in attempting to account for so extensive and sur- 

 prising a phenomenon."* 



* Professor J. D. Forbes' Travels through the Alps, page 49. 



