REMARKS OF MR. SEARS. 25 



Head and also branching to the right and leading by Chip- 

 man and Brimble Hills towards an old mill fed from 

 Beaver Pond, passing in its course an interesting moraine 

 some half a mile long, hidden in the woods near the mill 

 pond. He further alluded to the Woodbury farm near by 

 with its old homestead, containing timbers which were 

 thought to be parts of the first cabin built on the original 

 two hundred acre grant of 1635 "by the great pond side ;" 

 to the commanding view enjoyed from the various eleva- 

 tions in the neighborhood, and to the exciting scene wit- 

 nessed from these points at sunset on the first day of June, 

 1813, when the smoke of battle between the Chesapeake 

 and the Shannon could be seen from the hill tops along 

 shore, rolling over the bay just outside Baker's Island, and 

 when every lookout and housetop were so crowded as al- 

 most to justify the sarcastic verses of the British school- 

 boy, beginning, 



" The Chesapeake so bold out of Boston, I am told, 

 Came to take a British frigate neat and handy. 

 And the people of the port came out to see the sport, 

 With their music playing Yankee Doodle Dandy !" 



Mr. Rantoul first introduced Mr. John H. Sears of the 

 Pcabody Academy of Science, who spoke at seme length 

 of the geological features of the section, with which he re- 

 marked he had been very familiar from his boyhood ; say- 

 ing, among other things, that the entire rock formation of 

 the eastern part of Essex county was composed of erup- 

 tives, or, as in the case of the gneissoid schists which are of 

 sedimentary origin, such deposits are only seen where the 

 eruptive granites, syenites and traps have turned them 

 up on edge. These gneissoid schists are probably the old- 

 est rock formation in New England, which is proved by its 

 being cut by all the others, but may probably be contem- 

 poraneous with the gabbro, as the two masses are found 



ESSEX INST. BULLETIN, VOL. XX 2* 



