AMMONOOSUC GLACIER 289 



thus rendered somewhat difficult. The most conspicuous feature among 

 them is a gracefully winding ridge which extends about north and south 

 (magnetic) from the edge of these woods to the railway, just west of the 

 point where this is crossed by the State highway. The crest of the ridge 

 rises from 8 to 15 feet above the ground on either side. Although no 

 boulders lie on it, many are scattered on the ground beside it, suggesting 

 that it may once have had a sprinkling of blocks, like certain other 

 mounds and ridges which lie only a few rods to the northwest of it. 

 Much of this ridge has been cut away near the railway for use as road 

 ballast and several fresh sections are thus exposed. In all of them the 

 anticlinal bedding of gravels characteristic of eskers is plainly seen. In 

 structure as well as in form, therefore, this can be recognized as marking 

 a line of glacial drainage. Although in general it runs perpendicular to 

 the Ammonoosuc Valley — if the trend west of the White Mountain House 

 is considered — it is equally true that it nearly follows the trend of the 

 valley above that point, which is nearly north and south. Like the larger 

 esker at the Twin Mountain House, in its trend and relation to main and 

 tributary valleys, this little esker appears to mark a short stretch in the 

 course of a river which flowed southward through the melting ice-sheet 

 into the ponded waters of the Ammonoosuc. About 200 yards north of 

 the railway, near the edge of the woods, the esker is joined by shorter and 

 less regular hummocks, on whose surfaces angular blocks are numerous. 

 These are continued northward, in the half-lumbered woods up the hill- 

 side, by linear mounds of drift of less perfect form. How much farther 

 they extend I am not able to say. It is evident, however, both from the 

 form and the structure of the deposits and their relation to the valley, 

 that they are essentially a line of kames and not a recessional moraine. 

 On the steep hillside, about a mile east of the White Mountain House, 

 clearings reveal several other ridges, similar in appearance to this one. 

 They descend obliquely to the Ammonoosuc Valley. Some of them may 

 be of morainic character, marking the margin of the ice against the hill- 

 side, like those noted one mile east of Wing Road. If so, their north- 

 east-southwest trend requires an ice-front which was convex southward 

 and not northward; in other words, a tongue of the Canadian ice-sheet. 



CONCLUSIONS REGARDING LOCAL OLACIATION IN THE AMMONOOSUC 



VALLEY 



Observations in the Ammonoosuc Valley, between Bethlehem Junction 

 and Bretton 'Woods, appear to me, therefore, to fail to indicate the exist- 

 ence there at any time of a local Ammonoosuc glacier for the following 

 reasons : 



