310 SURFACE GEOLOGY. 
LakE RAMPARTS. 
Under this name I have described in earlier state reports ridges of 
boulders and coarse gravel bordering certain portions of shallow ponds. 
They occur where the water is not deep, and there is a considerable 
exposure of shoal bottom strown with boulders. As the water freezes in 
the winter the ice encloses these stones, and by virtue of expansion 
moves them nearer the shore. The amount of pushing in a single sea- 
son would be small; but the work would be resumed every winter, and 
in the course of ages the fragments would reach the shore, and perhaps 
be crowded inland. Farmers who build fences on the edges of a wide 
ditch often find them bent or prostrated in the spring for a similar rea- 
son; the expansion of the water in freezing has pushed them over. 
Several instances of these ridges have been observed in New Hamp- 
shire. The best known is on the Vaughan shore in Moultonborough, in 
the north-east part of Lake Winnipiseogee. We find there a ridge one 
eighth of a mile long, opposite a broad expanse of shallow water about 
four feet in height. Passing easterly 125 feet, the ground is low and 
swampy, and another similar ridge about fifteen feet high is encountered, 
fronting a low terrace. It is very likely this ridge represents an older 
rampart, made when the lake stood at a higher level. The shore and 
the ridges are covered by shrubs and trees. A pine had been cut re- 
cently from the smaller rampart, whose trunk has a diameter of twenty- 
eight inches. From this I obtained a section for the museum, and 
counted 122 rings of growth upon it. As this had been cut twenty-five 
years Bee to my visit (1871), it is obvious that certainly a century 
has elapsed since the formation of the rampart. I saw 
a tree still standing upon this ridge twenty-seven inches 
A few years since, in the case of the town 
SES of Gilford v. The Winnipi- 
1 seogee Lake Company, it 
in diameter. 
was found expedient to use 
Fig. 62.—LaKE RAMPART, MOULTONBOROUGH. tn facts shown by this ram- 
part with the trees upon it, to prove that there had been no unusual 
flowage of the lake for the past hundred years. The whole court ad- 
journed to visit the locality. Fig. 62 shows the two ramparts with a tree 
