224 
GEOLOGY OF THE THIRD DISTRICT. 
In Russia, according to the recent report of Messrs. Murchison and Verneuil, the operation 
of raising blocks of rock from a lower to a higher level for example, is well exhibited at about 
eighty miles above Archangel, where a range of angular blocks of white limestone is piled 
up about twenty or thirty feet above the river. This has been effected by the freezing of the 
water around the blocks at the water line, the spring freshet raising and drifting the whole to 
the new shore ; and by thawing, the blocks are deposited at a higher level. The same ope¬ 
ration, with the drift from north to south, is more in accordance with the general fact in New- 
York, than that of marine submergence and icebergs. The absence of all marine produc¬ 
tions whatever, excepting those which form a part of the ancient materials of the alluvial, 
are in opposition to any but a very transient submergence, hardly sufficing to explain the 
number of boulders which have been let down or cast upon the surface, and leaving wholly 
unexplained the prodigious amount of northern drift in the form of paving stones, pebbles 
large and small, sand and earth, which exists all over the counties south of the Mohawk 
valley or Helderberg range, these drifted materials extending even into Pennsylvania. 
An opinion prevails in the United States, that the whole of the boulders have been carried 
from north to south, and hence a flow or flood of water from the north has been adopted. 
This is fully negatived by the northern primary nucleus of New-York; and when that of the 
eastern range in New-Hampshire is examined in all its directions, the facts observed in New- 
York will be found to be common to both. In the third district the boulders of primary rock 
are found to the west and the northwest, as well as on the south side of the primary nucleus 
from whence they originated ; and from the observations of Dr. Emmons, they occur also on 
the north and the east side of the same nucleus ; confirming the great fact recorded in Europe, 
that they are not the result of a flow in one direction, but as it were radiate from a common 
centre or centres ; or in other words, have been distributed on all sides from central upraised 
or upraising primary masses. This is a necessary conclusion, since the primary masses 
which give origin to the greater number of the northern boulders now elevated five and six 
thousand feet above the ocean, were once the lowest as to altitude, and were raised in modern 
eras ; but so long as observations were confined to the south side of these upraised nuclei, 
as matter of fact no other origin could be given to their boulders, but the one so generally 
entertained and published. 
Lake Marl. 
This substance is a carbonate of lime, which has separated from its solvent, in water; the 
latter preventing its particles from cohering together, and allowing them to subside in the state 
of a calcareous mud. It is in many places constantly depositing from waters holding lime¬ 
stone in solution. 
In the third district, there are two sources from whence its material was derived : The first 
and greatest is from the calcareous rocks, and is found in great abundance north of the Hel¬ 
derberg range, and in some of the valleys of the range ; the other kind appears to have been 
derived from calcareous alluvion, and is found chiefly to the south of the range. 
