G2 DETAILS. 



The following details respecting the dispersion of bowlders in different parts of the 

 State are compiled from his field notes, by Charles H. Hitchcock : 



" In passing from Brattleboro'jto Bennington, about five miles west of the former place, we meet with 

 great numbers of bowlders of a peculiar porphyritic hornblende schist. This rock is in place at Williarns- 

 ville, in Newfane, and southerly from this place they can be traced across New England, decreasing in 

 quantity and size. At Amherst the pebbles of modified drift are often porphyritic hornblende. 



" The high region between Marlboro and Wilmington is covered with drift ; some of the bowlders as 

 much as six feet in diameter. Still more abundant and larger are they in Searsburg, on Deerfield Kiver. 

 There they are from twenty-five to thirty feet in diameter sometimes, and in great quantities. The drift 

 agency, very probably conjoined with that of glaciers, has denuded the surrounding hills, so that in many 

 places they are almost destitute of vegetation. The rock is a peculiar greenish variety of mica schist. 

 Across the whole of Woodford the ledges of rocks are covered with drift, mostly of quartz and gneiss. 



" The quartz bowlders along the western foot of the Green Mountains are appropriately called hard 

 heads. In some places, as at North Bennington, houses are built of them by cementing them together 

 with lime mortar. Except where they have been carried westward by a stream, as on the Walloomsac, 

 these hard heads are not found west of rocks in place. This proves the force to have been from the north 

 or northwest. If some seeming exceptions to this statement may be found, as the quartz bowlders occasion- 

 ally in the higher parts of Shaftsbury, probably they originated in the Potsdam sandstone in New York. 

 "In Londonderry and Peru the surface everywhere is strewed over with bowlders of some variety of 

 gneiss, but not very large. The same may be said of most of Windham County, where the common bowl- 

 ders are usually not more than three or four feet in diameter. 



" The top of Ascutney is destitute of bowlders, as we might expect. On the northwest and southwest 

 sides of the mountain they are numerous, as well as in the valley between Ascutney and Little Ascutney. 

 South of the mountain, through Weathersfield and Springfield, they are common, most of them corres- 

 ponding to the granite and syenite of the mountains. On the hills of Cavendish and eastward to the Con- 

 necticut Biver, as well towards Bellows Falls, through Chester, they are quite frequent. 



" The towns near Connecticut Kiver, north of Ascutney, as at White Kiver Junction, Norwich, Thetford, 

 Strafford, and East Sharon, are pretty thickly covered with drift in the common form. In Hartford, bowl- 

 ders of kyanite, and one of red iron ore from the region north of Burlington, were noticed. In Thetford 

 and Pompanoosuc we find blocks with olivine and chrysolite. In Newbury occur bowlders some feet in 

 diameter of that remarkable concretionary granite which is found in place in Craftsbury, Stanstead in 

 Canada, and a few other places. They are found also in Ryegate and Waterford, of large size according 

 to Prof. Thompson, and this fact awakens the inquiry whether this rock may not exist in places farther 

 east than Craftsbury. Large bowlders of porphyritic hornblende schist, and a peculiar breccia are found 

 also in Waterford, and the latter in Newbury. Between Guildhall and Canaan, for thirty miles, we meet 

 frequently with large granite bowlders, and in general the northeast part of the State is strewed over with 

 granite bowlders. In the valley of Passumpsic River, between Lyndon and St. Johnsbury, they are large 

 and common, and they are specially so around Willoughby Lake. In some places over a wide space, as at 

 West Victory, not a bowlder can be seen. 



" Between Barnet and Marshfield, especially in the latter place, granite bowlders of large size are com- 

 mon. At Montpelier they are sometimes of gneiss, from a range of that rock in West Waterbury, the 

 direction of the drift agency having been up the valley of Winooski. At a waterfall on that river in 

 West Waterbury, a bowlder, perhaps twenty feet through, has fallen into a gorge, which is spanned by it, 

 and the water passes beneath it. 



" On the east side of Camel's Hump the bowlders are frequent, and a few foreign ones are found near 

 the top. On Mansfield Mountain they are mostly angular and correspond in character to the rock of the 

 mountain. 



