234 SURFACE GEOLOGY. 
communicated to me many other speculations concerning the existence 
of glaciers in the neighborhood, some that I could not indorse; but it is 
very gratifying to see that he published only what would stand the test 
of the most rigid scrutiny. It is to be regretted that he was unable to 
make other further publications, as intimated in the following paper. I 
subsequently searched the mountains, and other parts of the state, for 
facts confirmatory of Agassiz’s views, both as to the special case de- 
scribed and to the further development of similar classes of facts in other 
localities. These facts I will present after reproducing the original paper 
referred to. I find evidence ofa local glaciation in the White Moun-s 
tains, not in the style of sculpture and moraine advocated by Packard 
and Vose, but in the peculiar form of evidence first suggested by Agassiz. 
It required a genius like his to point out the proper method of investi- 
gation. 
Twenty-three years ago, when I first visited the White Mountains, in the summer of 
1847, I noticed unmistakable evidences of the former existence of local glaciers. They 
were the more clear and impressive to me because I was then fresh from my investiga- 
tions of the glaciers in Switzerland. And yet, beyond the mere statement of the fact 
that such glaciers once existed here, I have never published a detailed account of my 
observations, for the simple reason that I could not then find any limit or any definite 
relation between the northern drift and the phenomena indicative of local White 
Mountain glaciers; nor have I ever been able since to revisit the region for more care- 
ful examination. This year, a prolonged stay among these hills has enabled me to 
study this difficult problem more closely, and I am now prepared to show that the drift, 
so-called, has the same general characteristics on the northern and southern sides of 
the White Mountains. Whatever, therefore, may have been the number of its higher 
peaks which, at any given time during the glacial period, rose above the great ice 
sheet which then covered the country, this mountain range offered no obstacle to the 
southward movement and progress of the northern ice fields. To the north of the 
White Mountains, as well as to the south, the northern drift consists of a paste more or 
less clayey or sandy, containing abraded fragments of a great variety of rocks, so im- 
pacted into the minutely comminuted materials as to indicate neither stratification nor 
arrangement or sorting, determined by the form, size, or weight of these fragments. 
Large boulders and pebbles of all sizes are found in it throughout its thickness, and 
these coarser materials have evidently been ground together with the clay and sand 
under great pressure, beneath heavy masses of ice, for they have all the characteristic 
marks so unmistakable now to those who are familiar with glacial action,—scratches, 
grooves, furrows, etc. These marks are rectilinear, but they cross each other at vari- 
ous angles, thus showing by the change in their direction that the fragments on which 
