UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



and the. hard dark, cross-bedded gray rock con- 

 tinues to the top. 



In the higher peaks of the southern Catskills an- 

 other kind of rock begins to appear before the sum- 

 mit is reached a conglomerate. The storm of 

 dark snow has turned to a storm of white hail. As 

 you go up, you seem to be climbing into a shower of 

 quartz pebbles. Presently you begin to see here and 

 there a pebble embedded in the rocks; then, as you 

 go on, you see more of them, and still more; it is like 

 the first sprinkle of rain that precedes the shower, 

 till, long before you reach the summit, the regular 

 downpour begins, the rocks become solid masses of 

 pebbles embedded in a gray hard matrix; there are 

 many hundreds of feet of them. On the top the soil 

 is mainly sand and coarse gravel from the disinte- 

 grated rock. 



The streams at the foot of the mountains abound 

 in fragments of this pudding-stone or conglomerate, 

 and in the hard, liberated quartz pebbles. These 

 pebbles were rolled on an ancient sea-beach incalcu- 

 lable ages ago, and now they are being rolled and 

 worn again by the limpid waters of the Catskill 

 trout-brooks. What varied fortune the whirligig of 

 time brings to quartz pebbles as well as to men! 



Of course the Catskills were under water when 



this conglomerate was laid down upon them. The 



coal age was near at hand, and a conglomerate akin 



to this of the tops of the Catskills underlies the coal 



48 



