General Meeting.] 
173 
[Dec. 17, 
General Meeting, December 17 , 1890 . 
Prof. F. W. Putnam in the chair. 
The following communication was read : 
KAME RIDGES, KETTLE-HOLES, AND OTHER PHE- 
NOMENA ATTENDANT UPON THE PASSING 
AWAY OF THE GREAT ICE-SHEET IN 
HINGHAM, MASS. 
BY T. T. BOUV£. 
I have within the last two or three years studied carefully the 
phenomena attendant upon the great and long-continued flooding 
over the ice-sheet and the land upon the passing away of the great gla- 
cier in the Champlain Period. This in preparation of a Chapter of the 
Geology of Hingham furnished as a contribution to the forthcoming 
history of the town. As, however, the issuing of that work will 
be sometime longer delayed, the substance of that portion relating 
to the kame ridges and kettle-holes is here presented for publica- 
tion in our Proceedings, mostly in the same language. 
Undoubtedly the formation of these ridges and of the singular 
hollows in the land contiguous, known as kettle-holes, is to be 
ascribed to the passing away of the ice-sheet. 
Kames. 
There are found extensively over New England, where the great 
glacier covered the surface, ridges of a peculiar character which 
ordinarily run in a direction approximate to northwest and south- 
east. The variations from this direction are common and often so 
like those of a stream of water in its course as to have suggested 
that the many rivers pouring over the glacial sheet during its sub- 
sidence, cutting into its surface and receiving from it a large por- 
tion of its burden of rocky, gravelly and sandy material, somehow 
led to the formation of these singular elevations which have long 
excited the interest of beholders. The view is a reasonable one, 
and if such was the origin of kames referred to, their general 
direction and sinuous course are readily accounted for, as currents 
of water on the melting glacier would ordinarily run towards the 
retreating ice front. 
PROCEEDINGS B. S. N. H. 
VOL. XXV 
12 
APRIL, 1891. 
