DISTRIBUTION OF SOILS. 217 



portation of the rocks ami soils of this country ; since they could amount to little more 

 than hazardous conjectures, and perhaps we have enough of these already, although we 

 claim to have presented a few considerations which have heen too little regarded by writers 

 upon the subject of drift and diluvial action. We think, too, that the fact that the whole 

 body of the soil of this country is a transported soil, has not, to say the least, been suffi- 

 ciently dwelt upon, and has not had its proper weight in the framing of hypotheses to 

 account for diluvial action. 



Era of diluvial action. We are now to inquire into the era of the transport of the soils 

 and rocks. Only one opinion is known to prevail upon this question : all geologists agree 

 in placing the diluvial period among the last of the great revolutions of the globe. We 

 are compelled to place it before the Noachian deluge, from considerations which seem to 

 prove that that time is too short to admit of the deposit of the tertiary of Lake Champlain, 

 which, from its position, is proved to have been deposited posterior to the drift period. All 

 we can say, then, is that it is comparatively a recent epoch. 



Final cause of diluvial action. What was the final cause of the transaction 1 It may be 

 irrelevant to the purposes of this essay, to discuss the bearing of a question of this nature ; 

 still we hope it will not be found unprofitable to offer one or two remarks upon it. As in 

 numberless instances of less magnitude than this, we are impressed with the idea that some 

 special design was manifested by the accomplishment of an event, some general good 

 secured by it, and that this good had reference to the benefit of man ; so we are now to 

 seek what beneficent design is manifested, what great general good has been secured, and 

 what benefits have enured to the human race, through the change wrought upon the sur- 

 face of our planet by the mighty upheavals and subsidences and currents which have 

 converted sea into land and land into sea. Among these benefits, no inconsiderable one 

 appears to us to come from the mechanical effect of the drift upon the strata. Fractures 

 and uplifts had rendered the earth's surface rough and rugged, broken and uneven ; so 

 much so, indeed, that it would have been but a sorry field for cultivation, and for the 

 habitation of man. Hence we regard the drift period as having been designed for the 

 purpose of polishing down the strata, and removing their roughness and their asperities ; 

 while at the same time a vast amount of new soil was produced by the same operation, 

 and mixed and spread widely over the surface, serving to increase the depth of the soil, 

 and fill up many irregularities which then existed. 



Such we regard as an epitome of the final causes of this great and astonishing event. 

 But are there no other instances, in the earth's history, of similar phenomena 1 We answer 

 that there is at least one, or indications of one : it occurred in the era of the Trenton lime- 

 stone. During the deposit of this important rock, the process of deposition was suspended, 

 and in an intermediate period, diluvial action took place, wore down and polished and 

 grooved its surface as in the period we have just descri'oed. This fact we were the first to 

 observe at Plattsburgh and Cumberland head. In splitting off a layer of the limestone, 

 we observed that its surface was smooth, and even polished, and that the inferior surface 



[Agricultural Report] 28 



