Finch on the Celtic Antiquities of America. 157 



Ireland, Hudson, and Winnipigon, seated upon the lofty 

 hills, and surrounded by their sacred circles of stone, were 

 calculating the progress of the seasons, the revolutions of 

 the planets, and the eclipses of the sun, by the same lormu- 

 Ise which their ancestors had first practised in the central 

 plains of Asia. 



4. RocJcing Stones, are memorials raised by the same 

 people, and the same race of men, who elevated the crom- 

 lechs; they consist of an enormous stone so equally poised 

 upon its base, that a very small force is sufficient to move 

 it ; sometimes even the touch of a finger will cause it to 

 vibrate. 



There are several of these memorials of a former race, in 

 the United States of America, but of the origin of the whole 

 of them we cannot be certain, until an accurate account is 

 published of their size, appearance, and situation, and it 

 would be desirable if they were illustrated by correct draw- 

 ings. In the State of New-York there are probably three 

 or more. Professor Green has described one, in the Ame- 

 rican Journal of Science, vol. 5. page 252. It is situated 

 near the top of a high hill, near the village of Peekskill, in 

 Putnam county ; the moveable stone is thirty-one feet in 

 circumference ; the rock is of granite, but the mica con- 

 tained in it being schistose, gives it some resemblance to 

 gneiss, and it is supported by a base of the same material. 

 This rocking stone can be moved by the hand, although six 

 men with iron bars were unable to throw it off its pedestal. 

 From the drawing which accompanies the description in 

 Silliman's Journal, this rock presents every appearance of 

 an artificial monument, and may perhaps with safety be 

 classed amongst the Celtic antiquities of North-America. — ■ 

 Putnam's rock, which was thrown from its elevation on one 

 of the mountains in the Highlands during the revolutionary 

 war, may have been a rock of this description. 



There is also a rocking stone in Orange County, State 

 of New-York, of which no account has yet been published. 



In the State of Massachusetts, 1 have heard of some 

 near Boston, between Lynn and Salem, but do not vouch 

 for the accuracy of the statement, until they undergo a 

 careful examination. 



There is one at Roxbury, near Boston, described in 

 the Journal of Science, edited in that citv. 



