near Mount Washington. 3 



of the glaciated region. On Mount Washington, if anywhere 

 in the eastern states, one would expect to find evidences of 

 local glaciers which developed in the shelter of its summit 

 before the ice sheet, spreading southward from Canada, reached 

 and enveloped the White Mountains, or which, when the ice 

 sheet melted away, lingered for a time in spite of the return of 

 a more temperate climate. 



Tarr's study of the glaciation of Mount Ktaadn in northern 

 Maine in 1899* stands alone as the product of a modern physi- 

 ographer and glacialist working in the mountainous interior of 

 New England. In this paper Tarr stated reasons for the belief 

 that this isolated mountain, inferior to Mount Washington in 

 altitude, and buried, like it, beneath the ice sheet, was subse- 

 quently occupied " as a last stage of ice action " by local 

 glaciers, which filled several basin-shaped valleys and built 

 well-defined moraines. The evidences given were : (a) the 

 fresh, un weathered appearance of the precipitous valley walls, 

 which, although lacking glacial polish, are so much smoother 

 than the rock-strewn table land above them as to suggest that 

 valley glaciers have only recently withdrawn from them, just 

 as to-day they are melting out of certain valleys on the coast 

 of Greenland ; (b) " bear den " moraine deposits on the floors 

 of the steep-walled valleys or " basins," described as hummocky, 

 with kettles occupied with ponds, and strewn with blocks 

 which have come almost exclusively from the crags above. 

 Associated with this morainic accumulation Tarr noted what 

 seemed to be a lateral and an imperfectly formed medial 

 moraine in the " North Basin," although on account of the 

 density of the scrub forest close inspection of the ridges was 

 impossible. " I should not wish to pronounce it positively a 

 lateral moraine," he wrote, "though I fail to see any other 

 explanation for it; "(c) a high ridge of rock debris which 

 extends in front of the mouths of two valleys, as a terminal 

 moraine might be expected to do. 



So far as I know there has been hitherto no such study of 

 the Presidential Range as this study of Mount Ktaadn by 

 Tarr. The early glacialists, although reporting valley moraines, 

 northwestward moved erratics, and locally controlled strige in 

 the lower, outer parts of the White Mountains, seem to have 

 neglected to look for confirmatory evidence on the ranges from 

 which such glaciers must have been fed. It is true, of course, 

 that little attention was given in those days to the forms of 

 mountain sculpture peculiar to alpine glaciers. Otherwise it is 

 probable that the peculiar "gulfs" or "ravines" of the Presi- 

 dential Range would have been appreciated forty years ago, as 



*R. S. Tarr: Glaciation of Mount Ktaadn, Maine, Bull. Geol. Soc. 

 America, xi, pp. 433-448, 1900. 



