m.] 220 [April 2, 
I donot question, that in many cases, especially where the stratifi- 
cation is marked, the kames have been deposited by running water, 
as Mr. Upham thinks, in channels worn in the ice by the streams 
which gorged every outlet in the last days of the ice period.. But it 
still seems to me important to insist, that another movement such as 
was pointed out by Mr. King, is also frequently demanded to account 
for all the phenomena. 
8. So, if the existence of earthy material in definite lines on the 
surface of the ice, without regard to how it was brought into line 
there, be enough to constitute a medial moraine, the kames are true 
moraines. That is, the earthy material, held in the upper portions of 
the glacier, existed in excessive amount in the line of motion from the 
high mountains, and was swept by superficial currents, into lines upon 
the top of the ice, where, at the last stage, it would frequently be so 
thick as to preserve vast bodies of ice underneath from melting. 
From these masses the earth would slide down irregularly, forming 
the unstratified and reticulated ridges so frequent and so regularly 
recurring in New England. , 
This view is confirmed by the frequent sub-angular character of 
the material, and by a fact noticed by Prof. Stone, that the nearer we 
come to the White Hills, the vaster became the classified deposits — 
the pebbles being then two, three, and four feet in diameter. 
Mr. Upham mentions, also, that below Concord, N. H., the peb- 
bles in the kame, are one foot in diameter, and abundant, while many 
are two and three feet, and that all sizes are indiscriminately mixed 
through the whole mass. He also speaks of sections of the Merri- 
mack kame about Hooksett, as consisting mainly of numerous rock 
fragments up to four or five feet in size, with no evidence of water 
action. 
GLACIAL DRIFT IN BOSTON AND ITS VICINITY. ~ 
By WARREN UPHAM. 
When Winthrop and his company came to Boston, ten years after 
the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth, they found a much more 
fertile soil and more majestic forests than those which had seemed 
goodly to the Pilgrims because with them they had found liberty. 
The cause of this difference is geological. Rivers which flowed 
down from the surface of the great ice sheet at its melting, spread 
comparatively barren gravel and sand, often in the irregular hillocks 
and ridges called kames, and elsewhere in extensive level plains, 
