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and seemed to differ somewhat in their mat;irial from most 

 erratics in the southern part of the couit:^. One of them 

 has a very curious position, resting by three narrow parts 

 on two rocks below ; and looks as if it might easily be pried 

 over, though probably that appearance was wholly deceptive. 

 These are a part of the great mass deposited over the face 

 of the country by the nortliern drift currents of the last great 

 geological age, before the present, or alluvial period. No ad- 

 ec^uate cause can be assigned for this drift-action, l)ut it is 

 certain that such currents have swept down from the north- 

 west, bearing along great masses of rocks torn from the 

 parent ledges, with smaller stones and gravel from the com- 

 minution of the coarser fragments, and piling them in hills, 

 mounds and ridges, here and there, or leaving such vast 

 blocks as then perched on the tops and sides of hills, in 

 almost every kind of sitiration. This being the general di- 

 rection, all rocks found in the drift beds of the southern 

 towns in this county, for instance, will appear also in the 

 northern, either in the same form, or as parent ledges, per- 

 haps ; but an erratic rock may be found here^ in a northern 

 town, yet nowhere south of here. Hence as we travel north- 

 ward we shall be likely to find the drift changing by the 

 introduction of new kinds of rock, as it might seem ; but 

 going south, the change would be by extinction, so to speak, 

 varieties ceasing to be found till the whole amount of drift- 

 material would disappear in the southern latitudes. He 

 had understood that some persons had made efforts to find 

 coal in this place, and expended some means for that pur- 

 pose. He had a specimen of the stratified rock in which 

 their excavations were made, and this said he, is not by any 

 means the kind with which coal is uniformly associated. 

 Had those, who wasted their time and money so foolishly, 

 been blessed with some little geological knowledge they 

 might have been spared the mortification of failure, for they 

 would never have thought of seeking for coal among such 

 rocks as these. The mineralogy of this region is quite in- 



