10 BOULDER REVERIES. 



At my feet, between me and the black oak, 

 are two dark gray, moss covered boulders, older, 

 far older than this sloping hillside in which 

 they are partly buried. Other boulders of gran- 

 ite, diorite and kindred igneous rocks, lie far- 

 ther down the slope. How many thousand 

 years ago were they dropped here? Agassiz, 

 the wise, told how they came, but even he could 

 not tell when. 



Would that I were on the parent ledge from 

 which the two at my feet were broken ; that ledge 

 which, hundreds of thousands, aye, millions of 

 years ago, was pushed up by force of heat from 

 the earth's interior, then acted upon by wind, 

 rain, frost and the potent oxygen of the envelop- 

 ing air until its edges were rounded and its 

 sides weatherworn, lichen bedecked, moss cov- 

 ered. Then the glacier, mighty in its strength, 

 all powerful in its onward motion, came to be. 

 Reaching the old ledge of diorite, it crumbled its 

 exposed and partially decayed edges into a score 

 of pieces. Bearing on its bosom of crystal these 

 giant fragments of broken stone, it brought them 

 on a journey perhaps ten thousand years in 



