Trains of Boulders, in Berkshire, Mass. 311 
certain long and narrow trains of large and angular blocks, 
seen, in the mountainous districts of New England, resting 
upon the surface of the more rounded materials of the ordinary 
drift. There are many conspicuous trains of this description 
in New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts. One striking 
example, to be met with in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, 
has been already the subject of instructive notices by Dr. S. 
Reid, of Richmond, who resides in its immediate neighborhood, 
and Dr. Hitchcock, of Amherst College. The earliest account 
of this very curious train was given by Dr. Reid, in 1842, in the 
Berkshire Farmer, a newspaper printed at Lenox ; that by Dr. 
Hitchcock was read to the American Association of Geologists 
and Naturalists, in May, 1844; and a still more detailed 
description, by Dr. Reid, was submitted to the same society, 
at their meeting in May, 1845. 
Neither Dr. Reid nor Dr. Hitchcock has ventured upon any 
hypothesis to account for this and other similar lines of bould- 
ers; but the latter observer, on the other hand, influenced by a 
spirit of philosophic caution, confesses that he finds so many 
difficulties on any supposition which he can make, that he “ pre- 
fers to leave the case unexplained, till more analogous facts shall 
ave been observed." Having, in the month of August last, 
While engaged in some observations on the geology of the Taco- 
me chain and the Green Mountains, been permitted, through 
the kindness of Dr. Reid, who guided us along this enormous 
stream of stones, to trace it to its source, and study with suffi- 
cient care its instructive features, we feel a desire to add to 
the descriptions already published a notice of a few omitted 
Points, which appear to us to deserve a record from their 
theoretical importance. Believing that all the phenomena of 
the drift Stratum, as seen in Berkshire, and, indeed, throug 
om the continent, do admit of intelligible explanation, upon 
the views we entertain of paroxysmal action, we propose to 
Submit these doctrines to the ordeal of the facts observed by 
- Reid, Dr. Hitchcock and ourselves. 
Standing on the most westerly elevated spur of the Taconic 
