Perry.] 110 [February 28, 
they be now somewhat obscured, in not a few of the valleys of New 
England. As an instance of what I suppose to be such morainie 
masses I might cite, though seventeen years have elapsed since I last 
saw them, the ridges along the valley of the Shawshine River, in 
Andover, Mass. 
At this point a statement made by Professor Dana requires no- 
tice. He says, “there were no lateral” moraines in the ordinary 
sense of this expression.” (p. 52). This, in the light in which he 
views the matter was no doubt true, during the earlier Glacial 
period, as the ice was for the most part extending, and thus allowed 
little opportunity for the formation of permanent moraines. Or, 
perhaps it should be said, if there were occasional wastings and re- 
treats of the ice, and thus the accumulation of the deposits answer- 
ing to them, they must have been speedily obliterated by the ad- 
vancing ice-sheet. During the Middle Glacial times, or as I might 
more correctly say, on the melting of the ice aggregated during those 
times, boulder-trains and other accumulations somewhat like lateral 
moraines, and partaking in part of a morainic character, must have 
been formed, though they were not probably very numerous. 
While such trains of erratics are occasionally met with in differ- 
ent parts of the country, they are perhaps nowhere better exhibited 
than in Richmond, Berkshire Co., Mass. Those in this locality are 
especially deserving of notice, both as illustrative of the point in 
hand, and because they have been in many respects greatly misap- 
prehended. ‘These boulders rest upon typical Drift, and are of two 
kinds, (1) such as have been rounded, smoothed and striated, and 
(2) angular. The rounded occur almost entirely in six or seven 
nearly parallel lines, two of which are particularly well defined ; 
meanwhile the angular are scattered over the ground more promiscu- 
ously. ‘These trains lie largely to the south-east of several peaks 
near the State-line. They originate partly in a nearly meridional 
range of hills, consisting of chloritic slate, in Canaan, Columbia 
County, New York; but more especially in two other parallel ranges 
of peaks with a like trend, situated to a considerable extent in Rich- 
mond. The latter ranges are also mainly composed of a greenish 
slate which contains extensive beds of interstratified limestone. For 
the most part, the character of the boulders is such, that they can 
be readily traced back to their exact source,—those of the two most 
prominent lines, to isolated peaks of the Canaan hills; those of the 
other trains, to similar heights in the Richmond ranges. Some of 
