On Bowlders and Rolled Stones. 33 



derry turnpike, we pass over a pretty hilly country for 

 nearly thirty miles, the whole of which is a mechanical de- 

 posit (except much granite in place) composed almost ex- 

 clusively of granite in blocks (some of which are of a great 

 size, more or less rounded) and of all sizes down to that 

 of sand. This granite in place, as well as the bowlders, re- 

 sembles exactly those large blocks so extensively worked on 

 theo|»posiie side of the Merrimack river to which place it is 

 possible they wiere transported by the sea — again approach- 

 ing the Merrimack at IMelhuen in Massachusetts, you will 

 find now and then the stone walls (but very rarely per- 

 ceive rounded masses of rocks of this kind) and in Ando- 

 ver about fifteen miles from the sea, 1 observed scarcely one 

 to a mile. How could these blocks become detached from 

 their natural bed in Danbury in New-Hampshire — how be- 

 come so perfertly rounded and that in immense quantities 

 in the course of three or four miles, affording at the same 

 time by their attrition, in that short distance, hills of coarse 

 and finer sand ? How could they become deposited in alluvial 

 hills, gradually diminishing in quantity as they recede from 

 their natural bed, at the same lime becoming evidently more 

 and more perfectly rounded-how could all tlii* have been ef- 

 fected and tnuch more but by a slowly retiring ocean .'' — May 

 not the ocean be still retiring although more slowly than here- 

 tofore.^ It may now probably be nearly stationary, still di- 

 minishing. It would seem that the diminutson must be 

 equal in volume at least to the whole quantity of earth 

 and sand carried into the bed of the sea, and there deposit- 

 ed by all the rivers and streams in the world — equal also to 

 all the timber and vegetables floated in and there deposit- 

 ed — to the immense growth of mountains, &c. by ma- 

 rine formation — to the sand perpetually carried thither 

 by the wind from a large portion of the face of the earth — 

 to the thousands of hills and banks of sand and gravel 

 perpetually washing away, similar to those of your 

 neighbourhood in Long Island Sound — and to the up- 

 filline;s produced by thousands of men who are perpet- 

 ually at work directly or indirectly in tliis manner. It 

 would seem that the water must diminish in a proportion 

 equal at least to all these effects ; otherwise! know not 

 why it would not be perpetually rising. If the ocean has 

 nbw the appearance of having become stationary it may be 

 Vol. IX.— No. 1. 5 



