Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899: Volume LVI, No. 1Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, November 1899: Volume LVI, No. 1
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
Having, then, arrived at a satisfactory conclusion regarding not only
the agent which conveyed the stones, but also respecting the period
during which they were transported, it is pertinent to inquire by what
paths they were brought to their adopted homes, and whether, if these
may be definitely charted, it may not be possible to follow them in a
direction the reverse of that taken by the diamonds themselves until we
arrive at the point from which each diamond started upon its journey.
If we succeed in this we shall learn whether they have a common home,
or whether they were formed in regions more or less widely separated.
From the great rarity of diamonds in Nature it would seem that the
hypothesis of a common home is the more probable, and this view finds
confirmation in the fact that certain marks of "consanguinity" have
been observed upon the stones already found.
[Illustration: FOUR VIEWS OF THE BURLINGTON DIAMOND (a little over two
carats); enlarged about three diameters. (Owned by Bunde and Upmeyer,
Milwaukee.)]
Not only did the ice mantle register its advance in the great ridge
of morainic material which we know as the "kettle moraine," but it
has engraved upon the ledges of rock over which it has ridden, in a
simple language of lines and grooves, the direction of its movement,
after first having planed away the disintegrated portions of the rock
to secure a smooth and lasting surface. As the same ledges have been
overridden more than once, and at intervals widely separated, they
are often found, palimpsestlike, with recent characters superimposed
upon earlier, partly effaced, and nearly illegible ones. Many of
the scattered leaves of this record have, however, been copied by
geologists, and the autobiography of the ice is now read from maps
which give the direction of its flow, and allow the motion of the ice
as a whole, as well as that of each of its parts, to be satisfactorily
studied. Recent studies by Canadian geologists have shown that one of
the highest summits of the ice cap must have been located some distance
west of Hudson Bay, and that another, the one which glaciated the lake
region, was in Labrador, to the east of the same body of water. From
these points the ice moved in spreading fans both northward toward the
Arctic Ocean and southward toward the States, and always approached the
margins at the moraines in a direction at right angles to their extent.
Thus the rock material transported by the ice was spread out in a great
fan, which constantly extended its boundaries as it advanced.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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