202 THE PHENOMENA OF DRIFT, OR 



than those in Andover. I had intended to obtain a drawing of 

 it ; but could not survey it. I would gladly re-survey all the 

 moraines with which I am acquainted ; in the confident belief 

 that, now I have been learnt to see, as Dr. Macculloch expresses 

 it, I should find many of these continuous ridges, where I have 

 supposed only a confused group of moraines to exist. 



In a recent rapid excursion through the State of New York, I 

 noticed, if I do not mistake, a few examples of moraines in ridges, 

 which I will briefly mention. As one passes by rail-road over 

 the dreary sandy plain between Albany and Schenectady, he sees 

 mapy examples of moraines, and several long and high ridges, 

 running, if I mistake not, nearly in the direction taken by drift in 

 that region. I can hardly doubt that these are of the same nature 

 as those in Andover ; and they deserve a careful examination. 



A little north of the town of Syracuse is a high ridge of gi'avel, 

 or rather two ridges, running a little west of north, and east of 

 south, and corresponding, as I am informed, to the course taken 

 by drift in that vicinity. At their base I noticed some large 

 bowlders of primary rocks from Canada ; as indeed one does, all 

 the way from Little Fr.lls to Buffalo. Such ridges, I am told, are 

 not unfrequent in central and western New York ; and where 

 they coincide in direction with the stride on the rocks, we may 

 infer that they are linear moraines. 



I can hardly doubt that the linear moraines of this country are 

 of the same character as the Osars of Sweden, described by 

 Brongniart, Beaumont, Durocher, and others. Yet I have seen 

 no account of these osars, sufficiently minute, to enable me to 

 judge whether they are so narrow, so steep on their sides, and so 

 crowded together as to interfere with one another, as we fmd to 

 be the case in our linear moraines. * 



The comparative recency of the agency by which the moraines 

 above described were produced, has been strongly impressed upon 



* January 1, 1S43. In Mr. Darwin's paper on the Ancient Glaciers of Caernarvonshire, 

 in the New Ed. Phil. Jour, for Oct. 1&-12, is a description of moraines in that country, 

 corresponding ahnost exactly to those in Andover and South Heading-. '• They " (mounds 

 of gravel,) savs he, " at first appear quite irregularly grouped : but to a person ascending 

 any one of those farthest from the precipice, they are at once seen to fall into three (with 

 traces of a fourth) narrow, straight, linear ndges " — ^p. 353. 



