550 GEOLOGY OF OLD HAMPSHIRE COUNTY, MASS. 



Bowlders of the peculiar brown, porous, aud di-usy clialcedou}' and 

 pyrolusite from Conway are so abundant across Amherst and Granb}' as 

 to deserve mention. One mass on the eastern peak of the Holyoke range 

 measures 6 by 6 by 4 feet. 



THE INTERGLACIAL SANDS. 



An elderly lad}' in Andierst says that when she iirst visited the town 

 of Amherst there was a remarkable spring, never failing, near H. ]\I. Burt's 

 residence, opposite the A^<I> house, the water from which Howed down 

 eastward across the common and into a quagmire overgrown with alders, 

 in which several pigs were drowned during her visit. Since then Mr. 

 Burt's well occupies the position of the spring, and is remarkable for its 

 volume of water, which often rises to within 2 feet of the surface at the 

 very crest of the ridge. 



Farther north on the same ridge the well at J. L. Lovell's house is 

 also remarkable for its abundant flow of water, it being almost impossible 

 to empty the well. Again, in lowering the Northampton road opposite 

 College Hall in 1878 a layer of yellow stratified sands, the finest 0.3 to 

 0.6™™, the coarsest 0.5 to 1™™ in grain, from 6 inches to a foot and a half 

 thick, much contorted, was exposed, which Avas covered by a thin layer 

 (from 6 inches to a foot and a half in the section, but rising to a greater 

 thickness farther north) of a hard, blue till and underlain by an ash}* till 

 carrying many striated bowlders, one mass of conglomerate being 3 feet 

 long. The sand layer continued to both ends of the section, about 5 rods. 

 The same section occurred at two excavations farther north on the same 

 ridge, on the grounds of Mrs. Davis and William W. Hunt. I did not con- 

 nect these facts or find suitable explanation for them until I had studied the 

 exceptionally interesting section furnished by the digging of the Amherst 

 House cellar. 



In digging the cellar a block of earth 92 by 104 feet and 12 feet deep 

 was removed, and at the same time the ditches of the Amherst waterworks 

 were opened, having a depth of from 5 to 8 feet and extending from a point 

 just in front of the cellar eastward to the dam in Pelham, a distance of 

 nearly 3^ miles, a mile north to the Plant House, 1,400 feet south to the 

 railway station, and 1,200 feet west to the brow of the hill on Amit}' street. 



The cellar section is illustrated by the figures of PI. XII, di-awn care- 

 fully to true scale. Fig-. 1 is taken from the northeast comer of the cellar, 



