CHAPTER III. 



HOW THE SOIL CAME. 



ALL the gravel and the clay and the loose stones that 

 rest now upon the rock bottom of the town are 

 very recent deposits. 



The story of the rock was told in terms of millions of 

 years ; but the events that occurred in the making of our 

 soil require only thousands. 



The hard granite rock received its uneven coating of 

 soil, namely, its Town Hill, its Deer Hill, its Bear Hill, 

 its James Hill, its Lincoln Hill, its Church's Hill, it 

 Souther's Hill, its Joy's Hill, all its meadows, its Meeting- 

 house Plain and its North End Plain — the hard rock 

 received all these heaps of ground material less than a 

 hundred thousand years ago. 



It came about through the gigantic efforts of a glacier 

 which once formed all over the northern part of North 

 America, and which remained upon it for most of the 

 time until about seven thousand years ago, grinding up 

 the rock like a huge mill and heaping its grist into the 

 shape of hills and plains and meadows. 



The marks of it can be seen as clearly as human finger 

 marks can be seen in putty or as the plow marks can be 

 seen in a field. There are scratches upon the underlying 

 rock in every part of the town pointing in a southerly 

 direction, as the glacier moved. The gravel and clay hills 

 of the town have all been stretched out in the same direc- 

 tion with the scratches. The north sides of all ledges 

 were rounded off and planed and scoured smooth by the 

 movement of the ice against that side, with its pebbles 

 and other fragments. 



More picturesque than any of these evidences are the 



