4 J. D. Dana on the Quaternary of the New Haven Region. 



4. Since icebergs are fragments of glaciers broken off by the 

 sea into which they descend, and since their freight of stones is 

 part of the moraines of the old glacier, the boulders of the New 

 Haven region, and of New England generally, should, on the 

 Iceberg hypothesis, be the rocks of the White Mountains (whose 

 highest peak, Mt Washington (the loftiest in New England) is 

 6288 feet high), or of some Green Mountain Peak (over a thou- 

 sand feet lower), if not from some more distant northern source. 



But, in fact, the boulders about New Haven have come 

 mainly from the central part of Connecticut and Massachusetts, 

 and largely from the hills or ledges in the Connecticut valley it- 

 self ; and not from any mountain summit or ridge either side. 

 They are therefore from the bottom of the alleged Iceberg sea, 

 and not from any emerged summits. 



These boulders are masses of trap 1000 tons in weight and 

 less ; and Mt. Tom and Mt Holyoke, situated adjoining the Con- 

 necticut river in Massachusetts, seventy miles north of New Ha- 

 ven, are the most northerly points from which such masses could 

 have come. The tops of these so-called mountains would have 

 been over 2600 feet below the surface if the Iceberg sea were 

 4000 feet deep. Other boulders are of the Triassic red sand- 

 stone ; and these also had their origin in the Connecticut valley^ 

 south of the northern limits of Massachusetts, for none exists 

 farther north. Others, of large size, some of them ten to four- 

 teen feet in length, are of gneiss and came from a gneiss region, 

 either in northern Connecticut, ten to twenty miles west of the 

 Connecticut river, or just north of this in the adjoining part of 

 Massachusetts. Again, six to eight miles west of New Haven, 



were derived from ledges less \ 

 north or northwest. 



The facts show, beyond question, that in the Glacial era, the 

 transported blocks came from the comparatively low regions, in 

 the very bottom of the supposed Iceberg sea, not far to the 

 north of New Haven, instead of from distant and elevated 

 heights to the northeast or northwest ; and this was true of all 

 the drift material. The observations of others over New Eng- 

 land, as well as those I have made over Connecticut, sustain the 

 conclusion that the sand and gravel of the unstratified drifl has 

 not come from remote points, but has been shoved southward 

 by some agent that could gather it up over the breadth of the 

 land and bear it onward to drop it after a few miles, or scores 

 of miles of transportation. All this is evidently impossible 

 work for icebergs. 



Since, then, icebergs cannot pick up masses tons in weight from 

 the bottom of a sea, or give a general movement southward to 

 the loose material of the surface ; neither can produce the abra- 



