22 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



perched bowlders that have been combed out of the mov- 

 ing glacier by the peaks of many ledges, and are now 

 poised, like the famous Tipling Rock, in scores of places 

 just where the glacier left them when it melted away. 

 There are few if any towns in the whole of North 

 America that possess a greater variety of glacial phenom- 

 ena than this one. Some sample of nearly all the opera- 

 tions of a glacier is to be found here ; and the glacial 

 story at this place is corroborated at different points all 

 across the continent north of Perth Am boy, N. J., and 

 Cincinnati, Ohio. 



Even the upper part of Mount Washington had bowl- 

 ders left upon it, says Professor Hitchcock, by this great 

 ice sheet. 



Along the Atlantic coast the ice was so thick as to 

 cover the highest point on Mount Desert Island, Me. ; 

 so that Prof. George F. Wright assures us that " at the 

 very margin of the ocean the ice must have been consid- 

 erably more than one thousand five hundred feet deep." * 



To imagine Cohasset covered with a layer of ice a thou- 

 sand feet in thickness requires an exercise of mind quite 

 beyond the ordinary ; but every reputable geologist in 

 our country would demand it of us, and we will be humble 

 enough to let Nature tell her story. There are many liv- 

 ing glaciers nowadays engaged in the same business that 

 was so extensively carried on here ages ago. On the 

 coast of Alaska, for example, there are not less than five 

 thousand glaciers, great and small, according to the esti- 

 mate of Mr. Elliott. t 



In Washington State there are several lying in the 

 ravines about Mount Ranier and Mount Baker ; while 

 even as far south as California, a little east of the Yo- 

 semite valley, there is a group of sixteen perpetual ice 

 streams. 



* Ice Age in North America, p. i66. 

 t See Our Arctic Provinces, p. 19. 



