28 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



place in order to show the practical bearing of the subject • and 

 inasmuch as those who till the soil are constantly meeting with 

 phenomena illustrating this interesting and important subject, they 

 ought especially to be well versed in all the facts which bear 

 directly or indirectly upon the subject. 



During the past year, (1843,) the field of my observations on 

 drift, have been confined to the western part of Massachusetts, tht 

 eastern counties of New-York, and a belt of country extending 

 from the Hudson to Buffalo, on the line of the Erie canal. 

 my observations as a whole, I will in the first place remark, tha 

 they go to establish most of the great principles in relation to drif 

 and diluvial action, which have been heretofore presented to th 

 Association — those for instance which relate to the scoring c 

 rocks, the course in which drift was transported, the materials c 

 which.it is composed, the period of its transport, the great pow€ 

 and force expended in its transportation, and partly in regard to il 

 organic remains. 



As it regards the direction of grooves upon rocks, and the kin 

 of materials of which any drift bed may be composed, the gener 

 law is, that the first have a direction varying but little from nor 

 and south, and the latter show that the materials also were deriv( 

 from the same direction. But occasionally an important exceptic 

 to this law is found ; for, where a powerful barrier lies in the dire 

 tion in which drift was transported, it is always deflected from : 

 course ; thus, both the grooves upon the rocks and the drift itse 

 near the base of the Catskill mountains, show a deflection of tj: 

 current of drift to the east, or, through the present valley of Catj 

 kill creek which flows in an easterly direction, and the bouldf 

 derived from the northern outcrop of the Helderbergh rocks, £ 

 transported across the Hudson at Catskill and lodged upon t 

 eastern bank of the river, in Columbia county. These facts go 

 show that the Catskill mountains, of sufficient height to forn 

 barrier, existed at the period of the drift, and operated as a b; 

 rier to those drift currents : and another fact, having the sai 

 bearing, is, that no foreign boulders are lodged far up the sides 

 upon the summits of the Catskill. I* 



My observations, however, on this last point are limited. I- 

 the general law that drift had a northern origin, is finely illustratjl . 

 in all the drift beds which lie in a belt of country from the C(i- ^ 



