DISTRIBUTION OF SOILS. 
217 
portation of the rocks and soils of this country ; since they could amount to little more 
than hazardous conjectures, and perhaps we have enough of these already, although we 
claim to have presented a few considerations which have been too little regarded by writers 
upon the subject of drift and diluvial action. We think, too, that the fact that the whole 
body of the soil of this country is a transported soil, has not, to say the least, been suffi¬ 
ciently dwelt upon, and has not had its proper weight in the framing of hypotheses to 
account for diluvial action. 
Era of diluvial action We are now to inquire into the era of the transport of the soils 
and rocks. Only one opinion is known to prevail upon this question : all geologists agree 
in placing the diluvial period among the last of the great revolutions of the globe. We 
are compelled to place it before the Noachian deluge, from considerations which seem to 
prove that that time is too short to admit of the deposit of the tertiary of Lake Champlain, 
which, from its position, is proved to have been deposited posterior to the drift period. All 
we can say, then, is that it is comparatively a recent epoch. 
Final cause of diluvial action . What was the final cause of the transaction'? It may be 
irrelevant to the purposes of this essay, to discuss the bearing of a question of this nature ; 
still we hope it will not be found unprofitable to offer one or two remarks upon it. As in 
numberless instances of less magnitude than this, we are impressed with the idea that some 
special design was manifested by the accomplishment of an event, some general good 
secured by it, and that this good had reference to the benefit of man ; so we are now to 
seek what beneficent design is manifested, what great general good has been secured, and 
what benefits have enured to the human race, through the change wrought upon the sur¬ 
face of our planet by the mighty upheavals and subsidences and currents which have 
converted sea into land and land into sea. Among these benefits, no inconsiderable one 
appears to us to come from the mechanical effect of the drift upon the strata. Fractures 
and uplifts had rendered the earth’s surface rough and rugged, broken and uneven ; so 
much so, indeed, that it would have been hut a sorry field for cultivation, and for the 
habitation of man. Hence we regard the drift period as having been designed for the 
purpose of polishing down the strata, and removing their roughness and their asperities ; 
while at the same time a vast amount of new soil was produced by the same operation, 
and mixed and spread widely over the surface, serving to increase the depth of the soil, 
and fill up many irregularities which then existed. 
Such we regard as an epitome of the final causes of this great and astonishing event. 
But are there no other instances, in the earth’s history, of similar phenomena] We answer 
that there is at least one, or indications of one : it occurred in the era of the Trenton lime¬ 
stone. During the deposit of this important rock, the process of deposition was suspended, 
and in an intermediate period, diluvial action took place, wore down and polished and 
grooved its surface as in the period we have just described. This fact we were the first to 
observe at Plattsburgh and Cumberland head. In splitting off a layer of the limestone, 
we observed that its surface was smooth, and even polished, and that tire inferior surface 
[Agricultural Report.] 28 
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