254 Conglomerates in New England Gneisses. — Hitchcock. 
pebbles, they do not prove a sedimentary origin of the older 
gneisses. The first case you allude to at Newport, R. I., where 
my father noticed pebbles which had been distorted by pres¬ 
sure belongs to the Carboniferous. The conglomerates on 
both flanks of the Green mountains described by my father 
are really at the base of the fundamental quartzite of the 
Taconie system. Or if they are older, they are a part of the 
Green Mountain gneiss which is supposed to overlie the true 
Laurentian. Being on or near the line of junction of the 
schist and quartzite I have always regarded them as belong¬ 
ing to the later or derived series. The next illustration is 
cited from Mt. Ascutney in eastern Vermont. The statement 
about the derivation of the porphyry and granite from a con¬ 
glomerate is certainly in favor of the origin of granite from the 
melting of pebbles. This case was brought to my father’s 
notice in 1859 by myself. He accepted my explanation of 
the appearances and wrote the account of them in the report. 
After twenty years of experience in studying crystalline rocks 
I returned to Ascutney and could not accept the earlier view. 
We had been led astray partly by the unusual position of the 
apparent beds, which have a direction almost at right' angles 
to the prevalent strike of the neighborhood, consequently, if 
they are stratified they belong to three different horizons. The 
view of my father presumed the three rocks to be part of the 
same bed, altered by thermal influences in proportion to their 
intensity. The whole mountain is full of fragments of rocks 
evidently torn from inferior ledges when the syenite came up 
from below. I have found this syenite to be a truly eruptive 
mass, coming up through a vent and spread out over Silurian 
upturned strata. It is a cone 2,000 feet high, having strati¬ 
fied rocks underneath which have been altered by contact 
with a molten igneous mass forced over them. It must be 
true, however, that some of the fragments have been forced 
into the syenite, but there is no appearance of rounding 
through aqueous attrition in any of the fragments. The illus¬ 
tration from Granby is of the same nature. 
It would be possible to add from my New Hampshire re¬ 
port illustrations where the melting up of fragments has been 
more complete, but there is no evidence of a deposition from 
water. Take the case of Mt. Pequawkefc (or Kiarsarge) near 
North Conway, the cone of granite 2,500 feet high has at its 
