o4< > TJic Ainei'K'iin Geo/or/lst. Dec-mbpr, iwia 
rounik'd top aiid steep slopes, especially at tiie sides. I'roiii which 
features I'rof. ('. II. Ilitcheock in 187() named them hiitinilur 
hills, the first distinctive term applied to these drift accumula- 
tions in this countiT. Suljsecpiently the name (/rmiiliiis, used by 
M. H. Close ten years earlier for similar hills and ridges of till 
in Ireland, has come also into common use here. 
Oval or elliptical forms of drumlins prevail, with rare excep- 
tions, in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. In 
some other districts, as in central New York, these hills vary from 
tiieoval type to prolonged ridges, running nearly straiglit several 
mill's: and in eastern Wisconsin, as descrilied by Chamberlin. they 
arc pn^vailingly circular and dome-shaped on some areas, being 
thei'efore calletl iiuun miliar// /tills, while in other localities they 
occur mainly as long parallel ritlges. Wherever drumlins are 
found, their longer axes trend in parallelism with the courses of 
the glacial strife and transportation of boulders, that is. with the 
current of the ice-sheet. Glacialists are agreed that this relation- 
ship and the very regular and smooth contour of the drumlins 
resulted from the moulding action of the overriding ice. to which 
masses thus elongated opposed the least resistance. 
In the areas of their greatest development the drumlins range in 
hight from 25 or oO feet up to 2(l() feet or rarely more, and propor- 
tionately in length from an eighth of a mile to one mile, or, infracts 
where they l)ecome long ridges, two to tliree miles or more. The 
slopes of their ends are gentle or moderately steep, having from 
5 to 20 feet of ascent in a distance of a hundred feet: l»ut the 
steeper ascent of their sides varies usually from 15 to o(l feet in 
the same distance. Instead of amassing the till in such promi- 
nent accumulations, we should expect that the ice-sheet would 
tend constantly to wear away the hill tops and leave thick de- 
posits of subglacial drift only in depressions of the country and 
on low or nearly level land. 
That the drumlins are commonly till or boulder-clay from 
crest to base is shown by sections of wells and other excavations, 
and on the coast l)y wave erosion, as in Boston harbor and its 
vicinit}', where a third or half of a drumlin in numerous instances 
has been washed away, leaving sea clitFs of till from 2(1 to 100 
feet high. Frecpiently, however, drundius rest on moderate ele- 
vations of the bed rocks, which outcrop on portions of the lower 
slopes to a hight of perhai)s 50 or 100 feet, forming a pedestal 
