1872.) 111 [Perrys 
these lines of erratics may be followed south-easterly for four or five 
miles; others, passing over the next eastern tier of hills known as 
the Lenox range, can be followed for ten or fifteen, and one of the 
larger, for some twenty miles. Their direction, in the first portion 
of their course, is southward about 55° east. Somewhat further on 
they change their trend, it being in the main some 85° east of south. 
Such are the main facts in regard to the Richmond boulder-trains. 
Having been familiar with the erratics in question from childhood, 
—having such an acquaintance with them as a lad in the neighbor- 
hood might have, even years before they were pointed out to Presi- 
dent Hitchcock by my friend, Dr. Reid, of Pittsfield—and having 
carefully examined them a great number of times since, I am pre- 
pared to vouch for most of their general features as given above, and 
for many of their essential characteristics, even for some which have 
been impaired since they have been rudely assailed by man. 
Dr. Hitchcock, presuming that there was a submergence of the 
country during the Ice period, speaks of these boulder-trains as 
osars. Sir Charles Lyell, also supposing a depression, thinks these 
mateyials were transported by coast-ice ; while Professor Rodgers, in 
order to account for all such phenomena, has assumed the occurrence 
of vast waves of translation. There being no proof of these sup- 
positions,—especially in view of the straight course taken by the 
several parallel series of rocks, obliquely over high hills, and through 
the deep valley of Richmond,—the question arises, How is one rea- 
sonably to account for these trains of boulders ? 
As tc those which are rounded and in regular lines, and as toa 
portion of the angular which lie with them and are near their place 
of origin, it seems evident that they were torn from the hills by the 
ice-mass ; that they were forced along, and most of them smoothed, 
beneath it; and that the variaticn observed in their trend was 
caused by the change in the direction of the ice-mass adapting itself 
to the face of the country; on its wasting, they were laid bare in 
uniform lines as they now appear. As to the angular erratics, par- 
ticularly those which have travelled furthest and are spread over the 
surface more at large, another explanation is needful. As the vast 
ice-sheet which once covered the region gradually wasted, the eleva- 
tions from which these angular rocks were derived would be at last 
laid bare. The ice could no longer pass directly over the top of the 
hills; indeed, there is evidence that the mass was parted, moving 
_ around the north-eastern and southwestern flanks of the several 
