Perry.] 116 [February 28, 
its upper portion.1 These and many kindred instances, so difficult 
to be explained in any other way consistently with known facts, thus 
seem to be perfectly natural, when looked at in the light shed upon. 
them by their supposed connection with a continental ice-sheet, while 
they also bear witness to the probable lapse of time. Bearing in 
mind that such boulders are found huddled together, on some moun- 
tain heights in great numbers,—that they are, for the most part, an- 
gular ; also that there was probably a comparative rarity of these 
travellers on the surface of the main ice-sheet (for usually there 
would have been only here and there a straggler, detached from oc- 
casional elevations lying to the north) and that only one, out of 
many, could be bosne upon the summits of isolated heights,—we are 
led to infer, that the wasting of the glacial mass must have been very 
slow, in order to allow such accumulations of perched erratics to be 
deposited on lofty peaks. 
It is in point next to notice the formation of elevated beaches. The 
old shore-lines, occasionally met with high up the sides of mountains, 
are perhaps most of all deserving of examination, since inferences 
have been drawn from them, which appear to be by no means war- 
ranted by facts. These curious remains occurring at considerable 
heights in different parts of the country, and being clearly beaches, 
it has been supposed that they are ancient sea-beaches, and that the 
ocean once laved these points,—the land having been submerged to a 
great depth. The time of this supposed depression was the latter 
part of the Glacial period or during the times immediately subse- 
quent to it, since the beach-shingle invariably overlies the drift. 
Now it should be observed that no remains, of undoubted marine 
origin, have ever been discovered in connection with these water- 
worn materials, or at corresponding heights in other parts of New 
England ; we thus have no satisfactory evidence that these beaches 
were formed by the action of the sea. And yet, where an old shore- 
line was discovered at Ripton years ago, it was at once announced, 
and I believe it has been very generally cited since that time, as an 
evidence of oceanic agency. Indeed, so far as I am aware, it has 
been almost universally referred to a marine origin.? Attracted by 
1Such as have not time to visit the localities are referred to President Hitchcock’s 
Geology of Vt., Vol. I, pp. 57, 58. 
2This is the view taken by President Hitchcock, and as I suppose by the several 
other members of the late Geological Survey of Vt.; (see Final Report) by Pro- 
fessor Hungerford, one of Professor Dana’s pupils (see Proceedings of the Am, 
Ass., for the Advancement of Sci. for 1868, p. 112;) and many other competent 
observers. 
