234 SURFACE GEOLOGY. 



communicated to me many other speculations concerning the existence 

 of glaciers in the neighborhood, some that I could not indorse ; but it is 

 very gratifying to see that he published only what would stand the test 

 of the most rigid scrutiny. It is to be regretted that he was unable to 

 make other further publications, as intimated in the following paper. I 

 subsequently searched the mountains, and other parts of the state, for 

 facts confirmatory of Agassiz's views, both as to the special case de- 

 scribed and to the further development of similar classes of facts in other 

 localities. These facts I will present after reproducing the original paper 

 referred to. I find evidence of a local glaciation in the White Moun- 

 tains, not in the style of sculpture and moraine advocated by Packard 

 and Vose, but in the peculiar form of evidence first suggested by Agassiz, 

 It required a genius like his to point out the proper method of investi- 

 gation. 



Twenty-three years ago, when I first visited the White Mountains, in the summer of 

 1847, I noticed unmistakable evidences of the former existence of local glaciers. They 

 were the more clear and impressive to me because I was then fresh from my investiga- 

 tions of the glaciers in Switzerland. And yet, beyond the mere statement of the fact 

 that such glaciers once existed here, I have never published a detailed account of my 

 observations, for the simple reason that I could not then find any limit or any definite 

 relation between the northern drift and the phenomena indicative of local White 

 Mountain glaciers ; nor have I ever been able since to revisit the region for more care- 

 ful examination. This year, a prolonged stay among these hills has enabled me to 

 study this difficult problem more closely, and I am now prepared to show that the drift, 

 so-called, has the same general characteristics on the northern and southern sides of 

 the White Mountains. Whatever, therefore, may have been the number of its higher 

 peaks which, at any given time during the glacial period, rose above the great ice 

 sheet which then covered the country, this mountain range offered no obstacle to the 

 southward movement and i^rogress of the northern ice fields. To the north of the 

 White Mountains, as well as to the south, the northern drift consists of a paste more or 

 less clayey or sandy, containing abraded fragments of a great variety of rocks, so im- 

 pacted into the minutely comminuted materials as to indicate neither stratification nor 

 arrangement ■or sorting, determined by the form, size, or weight of these fragments. 

 Large boulders and pebbles of all sizes are found in it throughout its thickness, and 

 these coarser materials have evidently been ground together with the clay and sand 

 under great pressure, beneath heavy masses of ice, for they have all the characteristic 

 marks so unmistakable now to those who are familiar with glacial action, — scratches, 

 grooves, furrows, etc. These marks are rectilinear, but they cross each other at vari- 

 ous angles, thus showing by the change in their direction that the fragments on which 



