Perry.] 65 [February 28, 
at least at a distance from the seaboard. Then the direction of the 
striz in the greater part of New England is such as plainly to show 
that the White Mountains were not the centre of the main force 
exerted. There are also similar phenomena in the region lying fur- 
ther to the north, belonging to the great sheet of typical drift which 
spreads over the country, — phenomena which were evidently pro- 
duced by substantially the same agency, and equally demand an 
explanation. We may accordingly dismiss the supposition of White 
Mountain glaciers as unequal to the task imposed upon it. We may 
likewise waive, for the moment, the further consideration of these 
local details, and look, not merely at a few isolated cases, but at all 
the main facts heretofore suggested as indicative of ice-agency. 
If we admit that there was such a depression as the one supposed, 
it is easy for us to imagine that bergs of ice derived from a northern 
continent passed over the submerged region, and that they must have 
worn the face of the southern rocks in very many places. But while 
Tam willing to grant all this, if there be sufficient evidence in its 
favor, I can hardly conceive that so much as is actually met with 
could have been accomplished in this way. It is certainly difficult to 
believe that icebergs, even under such conditions, would have ground 
over almost the entire area of what is now New England, between 
points of elevation some five thousand feet above the existing height 
of the ocean, and others lying considerably beneath its level at low 
tide — ground them all over, so far as one can see, substantially alike, 
irrespective of the manifold inequalities of the supposed sea bottom. 
Owing to varying depths, moreover, they could not have passed, by 
any known action of currents, from the valleys of the St. Lawrence 
and of Lake Champlain, obliquely across the Green Mountain Range, 
forming uniform sets of groves, and a continuous planing of the rock 
surface. Or,if we may conceive of their doing this much, we must 
admit, in order to it, a set of conditions more wonderful and difficult 
of explanation than the facts in question. Again, it is not probable 
that icebergs would have made, in connection with the north-south 
planation which evidently extended hundreds of miles, the east-west 
strie, just where we find them in the valleys on the western sides of 
the meridional ridges, and the west-east strize in like situation on the 
eastern slopes of the same ranges. They must have been equally 
unable to do much in connection with the wearing and deepening of 
lake basins; for, notwithstanding their power to erode in given cases, 
they could not readily have gained access to these basins for the 
