E.. Hitchcock on a Bowlder in Amherst, Massachusetts. 897 
pulverised, forming the little soil which supports some of the 
scattered and scanty patches of vegetation on these islands. 
The minerals embraced in this rock are generally confined to its 
upper part where it unites and passes into the incumbent amyg- 
daloid, and many of them are also in common with that rock. 
They consist chiefly of quartz, crystalline and amorphous, ame- 
thyst, chalcedony, cacholong, agate, red jasper, felspar, zeolite, 
calcareous spar in rhombic crystals, sulphate of barytes, a minute 
crystal resembling black spinelle, sulphuret of iron and green 
carbonate of copper. 
The only appearance of an organized remain that I anywhere 
saw, was a fragment of carbonized. wood imbedded in this con- 
glomerate. It was in a vertical position, about two and a half 
feet in length and four inches in diameter: its color is black, ex- 
hibiting a fine ligneous structure, and the concentric circles are 
distinctly visible on its superior end; it occasionally gives sparks 
with steel, and effervesces slightly in nitric acid. 
ere are a number of active volcanoes in the vicinity of these 
ern shore, contains several. pipe ore island also one of this 
“only has boiling springs, and a whitish substance like melted 
eldspar exudes from some of its fissures. ie ag! # 
Arr. XXX V.—Deseription of a large Bowlder in the Drift of Am- 
herst, Massachusetts, with parallel strie upon four sides; by 
Professor Epwarp HrrcHcock. 
IN grading one of the streets in Amherst last year, the surface 
of a large bowlder, or ledge, in front of the residence of Hon. 
Ed mite aes. 
Tegion, viz., south a few degrees east. This fact led me to sus- 
pect the rock to be the top of a ledge: but on probing the earth 
around, I found it to be a bowlder. The present summer I pro- 
to my class in Geology, (which is the Junior Class in sod 
ege), to dig around the specimen, and try to remove at ~— + e 
top of it to the vicinity of the Geological Cabinet, about 1a a 
mile distant, where it might serve as a fine example of strize to 
fu " They promptly r) ed in the enterprise, and 
on digging around the specimen, found it to be of an oblong 
