ie SB alt 
J 
On Bowlders and Rolled Stones. 33 
derry turnpike, we pass over a pretty hilly “hg 4 
nearly thirty miles. the whole of which is a mechanical 
posit (except much granite in place) composed almost ex- 
clusively of granite in blocks (some of which are of a great 
size, more or less rounded) and of all sizes down to that 
of sand. This granite in place, as well as the bowlders, re- 
sembles exactly those large blocks so extensively worked on 
the opposite side of the Merrimack river to which place it is 
possible they were transported by the sea—again approach- 
ing the Merrimack at Methuen in Massachusetts, you will 
find now and then the stone walls (but very rarely per- 
ceive rounded masses of rocks of this kind) and i in “Ando- eo 
ver about fifteen miles from the sea, 1 observe cely 
toa mile. How could these blocks become detached from 
their natural bed in Danbury in New-Hampshire—how be- 
come so perfectly rounded and that in immense quantities 
in the course of three or four miles, affording at the same 
time by their attrition, in that short distance, hills of coarse 
and finer sand? How conld they become deposited in alluvial 
hills, gradually diminishing in quantity as they recede from 
their natural bed, at the same time becoming evidently more 
and more perfectly rounded—how could all this have been ef- 
fected and much more but by aslowly retiring ocean ?-—May 
not the ocean be still retiring although more slowly than here- 
tofore? It may now probably be nearly stationary, still di- 
minishing. It would seem that the diminution must be 
equal in volume at least to the whole quantity of earth 
and sand carried into the bed of the sea, and there deposit- 
ed by all the rivers and streams ia the world—equal also to 
all the timber and vegetables floated in and there rid oa 
ed—to the immense growth of mountains, &c. by ma- 
rine formation—to the sand perpetually cartied thither 
ty the wind from a large portion of the face of the earth— 
to the thousands of hills and banks of sand and gravel 
perpetually washing away, similar to those of your 
1e Bbdarhood in Long Island Soand—and to the’ up- 
ngs produced by thousands of men who are perpet- 
at E Work directly or indirectly in this manner. It 
mek seem that the water must diminish in a proportion 
equal at least to all these effects; otherwise I] know not 
why it would not be perpetually rising. If the ocean has 
oe the 5 pis ES of —" poe — it er be 
dhe 
