332 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. viii. 



much order interstratified with each other. Sometimes the melt- 

 iDg may have been so rapid that the entire section of a kame 

 may show only the deposition of a single summer, which would 

 then be very coarse gravel, without layers of sand. When the 

 bordering and separating ice walls disappeared, these deposits 

 remained in the long ridges of the kames, with steep slopes and 

 irregularly arched statification. Very irregular, short ridges, 

 mounds, and enclosed hollows resulted from deposition among 

 irregular masses of ice. 



The glacial rivers which we have described appear to have 

 flowed in channels upon the surface of the ice, and the formation 

 of the kames took place at or near their mouths, extending 

 along the valley as fast as the ice-front retreated. Large angular 

 boulders are sometimes, but not frequently, found in the kames 

 or upon their surface. Their rare occurrence forbids the supposi- 

 tion that these deposits were formed in channels beneath the ice- 

 sheet, from which many such blocks would have fallen upon the 

 kames. 



The course of the glacial river of Connecticut valley for a dis- 

 tance of twenty-four miles is marked by a single continuous 

 kame, frequently nearly covered by the alluvium of the highest 

 terraces, extending from Lyme, New Hampshire, to Windsor? 

 Vermont. Its height is 150 to 250 feet above the river, by 

 which it has"been frequently cut through, as well as by tributary 

 streams. This ridge occupies nearly the middle of the valley, 

 and as the river has cut its channel through the alluvium, this 

 has been often a barrier, rising steeply upon one side and pro- 

 tecting the plains behind it. In one or two placces it has been 

 swept away by the river for a distance of one half mile to one mile, 

 and below these places the terraces show, by their coarseness, 

 that the kame has supplied a portion of their material. Short 

 remnants of similar form and material occur northward at Wells 

 River and Colebrook, the last at an altitude of 1,050 feet above 

 the sea ; and southward at Charlestown, Bellows Falls, Dummer- 

 ston, and Brattleborough. The kame of Connecticut valley is 

 principally gravel, always water- worn, the largest pebbles being 

 one to two feet in diameter, with frequent layers, one or two feet 

 in thickness, of coarse, sharp sand. 



In the Merrimack valley, a series of kames, always in ridges, 

 sometimes a single one, but more often with irregular branches 

 or several parellel to each other, extends from Loudon, along 



