Man and the Glacial PeriodWright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
History
Man and the Glacial Period
Wright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
Glacial epoch; Prehistoric peoples
Trains of boulders, such as those already described in Rhode Island, can
frequently be traced to some prominent outcrop of the rock in a hill or
mountain-peak from which they have been derived. One of the earliest
of these to attract attention occurs in the towns of Richmond, Lenox,
and Stockbridge, in the western part of Massachusetts. Here a belt of
peculiar boulders about four hundred feet wide is found to originate in
the town of Lebanon, N. Y., and to run continuously to the southeast
for a distance of nine miles. West of Fry's Hill, where the outcrop
occurs, no boulders of this variety of rock are to be found, while to
the southeast the boulders gradually diminish in size as their distance
from the outcrop increases. Near the outcrop boulders of thirty feet in
diameter occur, while nine miles away two feet is the largest diameter
observed.
Sir Charles Lyell endeavoured to explain this train of boulders by the
action of icebergs during a period of submergence--supposing that, as
icebergs floated past or away from this hill in Lebanon, N. Y., they
were the means of the regular distribution described. It is needless to
repeat the difficulties arising in connection with such a theory, since
now both by observation and experiment we have become more familiar
with the movement of glacial ice. What we have already said about the
transportation of boulders over Switzerland by the Alpine glaciers, and
what is open to observation at the present time upon the large glaciers
of Alaska, closely agree with the facts concerning this Richmond train of
boulders, and we have no occasion to look further for a cause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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