16 WALKS AND TALKS. 



been described and figured by Professor C. H. Hitchcock in 

 his Report on the Geology of New Hampshire. The Churchill 

 Rock of Nottingham is 62 feet long, 40 feet wide and 40 feet 

 high. It contains 75,000 cubic feet, and weighs 6,000 tons. 

 Close by is Chase Rock, 40 feet long, 40 feet high and 30 

 feet wide. Vessel Rock, in Gilsum, now split by frost, 

 weighed 2,286 tons. The Green Mountain Giant, in Whit- 

 tingham, Vermont, weighs 3,000 tons; and a bowlder for- 

 merly existing at Fall River, Massachusetts, weighed 5,400 

 tons. At St. Ignace, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, 

 lies a porphyry bowlder 25 feet in height. Mr. G. M. 

 Dawson, in his report on the geology of the North-west Terri- 

 tory, describes a quartzite bowlder 42 feet long, 40 feet wide 

 and 20 feet high, and another nearly as large. It appears 

 that the greater part of North America, down to the latitude 

 of Cincinnati, is overstrewn by incoherent materials contain- 

 ing bowlders. The situation is similar in Europe ; and there, 

 also, certain "lost rocks" or "erratics" attain vast dimen- 

 sions. The " Pierre a bot (or Toad-stone), on the Jura Moun- 

 tains, about two miles west of Neufchatel, contains 40,000 

 cubic feet, and weighs 3,000 tons. As far south as the Lake 

 of Como, bowlders of large size are very frequently en- 

 countered. 



Often these lost rocks lie perched on the summits of sharp 

 cliffs ; and sometimes we find them so nicely poised that the 

 strength of a man suflices to give them a tilt. They are then 

 called " rocking stones." In Hanover, New Hampshire, half 

 a mile east of Dartmouth College, is a rocking stone 12 feet 

 long, 10 feet wide, 5^- feet thick, containing 480 cubic feet. 

 In Goffstown is one 8 feet high and 42 feet in circumference. 

 In Barre, Massachusetts, is one having a smaller bowlder on 

 its back, which, when in motion, suggests the idea of a 

 child's rocking horse. One in Fall River, poised on granite, 

 weighs 160 tons. 



We find bowlders at various altitudes, from the level of 

 the sea, to the height of perhaps six thousand feet ; but above 

 this, though rock fragments are extremely numerous, they 



