206 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



tions of which, without presumption, I venture to predict will be 

 across the river, and approximately from north to south. 



Drift and Strice in the Valley of the Hudson, including the Canaan 

 Hills. — On the banks of the Hudson, south of Albany, the rocks 

 frequently show the familiar mammiUated surfaces, — ^the striations, 

 where I observed them, running nearly north and south. The 

 Highlands of the Hudson also, on a smaller scale, recall the well- 

 rounded outlines of the Laurentine Chain ; and at the mouth of the 

 river numerous moutonnees surfaces strike the eye, while boulders 

 strew its sides and the surface of Staten Island in the harbour of 

 New York, — all attesting, thus far south, the undimiaished energy 

 of glacial action. 



Near Boston, gneissic rocks show the same signs ; and at Eox- 

 burgh, on the outskirts of the city, large surfaces of perfectly mou- 

 tonnee Eed Sandstone conglomerate were pointed out to me by Dr. 

 Gould, who informed me that, when he first took Agassiz to the 

 same spot, he at once recognized their ice-smoothed character. The 

 water-worn pebbles of quartz have been ground quite flat on their 

 upper surfaces, and stand slightly out from the rock, the softer sandy 

 matrix of which has yielded to the influence of the weather. 



The same kinds of indications are strong in all those parts of 

 Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont through which I 

 passed. There, as in the other places previously mentioned, the 

 country is much covered with clay, sand, gravel, and boulders, 

 partly rounded and apparently chiefly derived from neighbouring 

 formations. Far- transported boulders may be more scarce among 

 these mountains, their height having partly barred the transport of 

 floating material from the Laurentine Chain, whereas the broad 

 plains south of the lakes were more open to the ice drifting from the 

 north. In the above-named States, instances of fresh and of decay- 

 ing ice-worn and striated rocks are of constant occurrence in the low 

 ground ; and it is truly marvellous to see the same rounded contours 

 rising in the mountains to the very top, — again reminding the 

 traveller of the ice-moulded surfaces of the south-west of Ireland, of 

 the Highlands of Scotland, and of parts of Wales. In none of these 

 American locaHties are there, however, any signs of pre-existing 

 glaciers, such as are frequent in the mountainous parts of the 

 British Isles. 



I am unable to throw any new light on the perplexing ques- 

 tion of the glacial phaenomena of the Canaan HiUs. These have 

 been described by Dr. Hitchcock and Sir Charles LyeU. The range 

 lies on the east side of the Hudson, about twenty miles south-east 

 of Albany, and forms part of the Green Mountains, which are 

 an intermediate part of the long chain that, commencing on the 

 south with the Alleghany Mountains, trends north-easterly to the 

 Mountains of Notre Dame and Gaspe, on the south shore of the Gulf 

 of St. Lawrence. In the district of Canaan and Eichmond, their 

 average strike is nearly north and south, the rocks consisting of that 

 part of the Silurian series which ranges between the Birdseye and 



