63 



grief of the couutiy." Lewis, in his history of Lynn, 

 records several such instances of wanton destruction of 

 these things. Certainly, then, we can hardly hope for 

 much longer safety for this so tempting a trap for idle 

 folly, save in the hands of some known protector of these 

 aids to knowledge. 



It is hardlj^ necessary to attempt here any speculations 

 as to the process by which this stone came to be where it 

 now is. Indeed, this is an inquiry more pertinent for the 

 geological professor than for the mere topographer. Yet 

 there are considerations of a purely mechanical sort that 

 will not fail to arise in the mind of any reflecting person, 

 when contemplating such a work of nature ; and really 

 the dynamics of the drift period seem throughout to lean 

 more to the mechanical than the chemical side. It is 

 hardly possible to suppose Phaeton Rock to have been 

 ever moved more than once — ever raised from its first 

 landing-place, while the smaller stones were driven under 

 it — but we must, I think, conclude that all were borne 

 along together with an unmeasured bulk of other like 

 material, till in the slackened velocity of the current, the 

 heavy block settled through the silt and gravel, catching- 

 its four inferiors just when and where we see them, while 

 the lighter stuff passed on, and is now covering the south- 

 eastern ledges. But this alone will not, probably, account 

 for a tithe of the phenomena to be seen in the connection. 

 The questions of distribution, longer or shorter transit, 

 duplicate and cross currents, and a dozen others, come in 

 to complicate and confuse, till the stud}^ of the drift rises 

 to the grade of a first-class problem in science. It be- 

 comes me to leave the inquiry here, with the reiterated 

 wish, that this monument, more rarely designed and 

 sculptured than the Obelisks of Luxor, or the chiselled 

 Stone of Sweno, might be made a choice specimen in the 



