Eggleston — Glacial Remains near Woodstock, Conn. 405 



lake-level. The woods are thickly strewn with glacial bowlders. 

 Rounded hollows or basins, occasionally marshy, occur fre- 

 quently between the knolls or upon the level top of the 

 wooded bluff. To the north, a mile beyond the lake, may be 

 seen a well-rounded lenticular hill with its longer axis set in 

 the general valley-direction. It is known as Sampson's Hill. 

 These together constitute the important features of the region, 

 and their general relations as well as the details of glacial 

 topography on the east side of Woodstock Pond are shown on 

 the accompanying map (fig. 1). 



The glacial hypothesis. — In studying a region of glacial 

 action, it is well to keep clearly in mind the fact that at least 

 two periods of work may be postulated — one when the ice- 

 sheet actually covered the entire surface, and the other during 

 its retreat, when its southern border moved northward. The 

 work of the first would be due to the ice and the streams drain- 

 ing it beneath. Such work consists mainly in the removal of 

 all loose material and its deposition elsewhere. In some places, 

 notably where small inequalities of surface-level occur, sub- 

 glacial streams may deposit much of their burden of debris 

 and their work become actually constructive. Supposing work 

 of this kind to have continued throughout the glacial period, 

 upon the retreat of the ice these accumulations of roughly 

 stratified material in subglacial channels would be exposed as 

 individual mounds or more or less linear groups of knolls and 

 ridges. 



During the second period — that of retreat — all valleys more 

 or less blocked with glacial debris would be flooded with water 

 and many of these knolls and ridges drowned beneath the 

 waters of swollen lakes. Much of their material would be 

 worked over by lake-waters and, if floating ice abounded or 

 another slight glacial advance took place, a cap of coarser, 

 unstratified material would be strewn over them. With the 

 lapse of time, the passing of both periods, and the coming of 

 the present, a topography might be expected which would be 

 the resultant of all these factors. 



In the Woodstock area the topographic details are in entire 

 harmony with the glacial theory. We have a trough-shaped 

 valley evidently smoothed by some more powerful agent than 

 water alone. Its bordering walls and the neighboring hills, all 

 smoothed and rounded in a north-south direction, are witnesses 

 to the abrasive force of a great, southward-moving sheet of 

 ice. At the bottom of the valley are the remains of a lake 

 known, even in the memory of man, to have been considerably 

 larger but now slowly diminishing. It requires but little effort 

 to imagine the time when the meadows were completely sub- 

 merged and the three-hundred foot contour was the approxi- 



