LIMITED OCCURRENCE OF CIRQUES 291 



last regional glaciation. The absence of local frontal and recessional 

 moraines from the ground at and just above the lower limits of the 

 glacier-carved valleys, whose lofty headwalls must have furnished an im- 

 mense bulk of debris, many times as great as that ivhich now lies on the 

 floor of the troughs and cirques, and the presence instead of ground mo- 

 raine from the northwest was taken to indicate that the southeastward 

 advance of ice from Canada, following the period or stage of local gla- 

 ciers, had overwhelmed these and had blotted out their moraines, with- 

 out, however, destroying the great headwalls which they had carved out 

 or the troughlike form of their trunks. It was noted also that on the 

 headwall of the Eavine of the Castles, which faces northwestward, on the 

 north side of Mount Jefferson, projecting angles of the ledge were worn 

 into roches moutonnees forms by a southeastward movement of the ice 

 uphill against it, overriding the crest of the range at its head. It was 

 reported that the southeast side of the Great Gulf appeared to have suf- 

 fered considerable abrasion from ice passing over it during the regional 

 glaciation. The conclusions reached regarding local glaciation thus dif- 

 fered from those of Agassiz, Hitchcock, and Upham in the White Moun- 

 tains and of Tarr, at Katahdin, in two respects : (a) the local glaciers 

 were believed to be of very limited extent, and (b) they were believed to 

 be of earlier date than the last glaciation by the Canadian ice-sheet. A 

 few additional observations made in 1915 on the Mount Washington 

 Eange, Franconia Mountains, and Mount Moosilauke are reported in the 

 few pages which follow, inasmuch as they extend the limits of the district 

 which has been examined for signs of extinct local glaciers. 



A brief visit to the southern peaks of the Mount Washington Range, 

 giving me my first view of the ravines which flank them, and of the 

 ravines directly west of Mount Washington, satisfied me, as the general- 

 ized contour lines of the Geological Survey quadrangles had not done, 

 that a limited amount of cirque cutting has taken place on this part of 

 the range also. It is seen in the development of curved cliffs at or just 

 below the heads of Burt, Ammonoosuc, and Abenaki ravines, southwest 

 of Mount Washington, and of certain ravines tributary to Oakes Gulf. 

 In none of these is the bowl-shaped form complete. No such perfect 

 1,000-foot headwalls are displayed as those which distinguish Kings, 

 Huntingtons, and Tuckermans ravines and the Great Gulf, and below the 

 cliffs there is no abrupt flattening into a floor or basin bottom. The line 

 between the curved cliffs and the crest of the range is far less definite 

 here, also, than in the eastern and northern ravines, for the southern 

 peaks are steep-sided projections along a relatively narrow ridge, and 

 there are no extensive "lawns" or gently graded slopes to suggest a "bis- 



