204 THE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



Islands, and of the south shore of Rhode Island, and in those 

 forming the backbone of Long Island, we have one of the 

 most remarkable true terminal moraines anywhere to be 

 found in the world. 



Throughout their whole extent these terminal accumula- 

 tions form a marked feature in the landscape, rising for a 

 considerable portion of the distance from one hundred and 

 fifty to three hundred feet above the general level of the 

 country, and being dotted over with huge bowlders transport- 

 ed a greater or less distance from the north. Kettle-holes 

 and the small lakelets which they inclose are also constant 

 features in the landscape. Throughout this whole extent, 

 also, the moraines are flanked on the south by extensive de- 

 posits of the " over-wash " gravel carried out by the water 

 arising from the melting ice. The line of these moraines is, 

 of course, at right angles to the direction of the ice-movement 

 which terminated here. 



It is a remarkable confirmation of the theory already pre- 

 sented in explanation of kettle-holes, that a study of those 

 which mark the moraines of this region reveals a strong tend- 

 ency in them to arrange themselves with their longer diameters 

 parallel to the general trend of the moraine. Professor B. F. 

 Koons* has taken the exact bearings of one hundred and six 

 of these kettle-holes upon the island of Naushon and upon the 

 mainland from Wood's Holl to Falmouth, and finds that the 

 longer axis of eighty-two out of that number is approximately 

 parallel to the direction of the moraine — that is, nearly at right 

 angles to the direction of the ice-movement ; and he is doubt- 

 less correct in his inference that "this is what we should ex- 

 pect if the kettle-holes marked the localities where fragments 

 of ice were broken off from the face of the glacier and buried, 

 wholly or in part, by the earth and stones borne down by 

 the ice-sheet." By reference to the chapter upon the Muir 

 Glacier, with the illustration there introduced, the reader may 



* "American Journal of Science," vol. cxxvii, 1884, p. 260 et seq. ; vol. 

 cxxix, 1885, p. 480 et seq. 



