Man and the Glacial PeriodWright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
History
Man and the Glacial Period
Wright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
Glacial epoch; Prehistoric peoples
Mr. Crosby's investigations also convinced him that the movement of the
till, or ground moraine, underneath the ice was not _en masse_, but that
"it must have experienced differential horizontal movements or flowing,
in which, normally, every particle or fragment slipped or was squeezed
forward with reference to those immediately below it, the velocity
diminishing downward through the friction of the underlying ledges....
The glaciation was not limited to masses which were firmly caught between
the ice and the solid ledges, and it was in every case essentially a
slipping and not a rolling movement.... These differential horizontal
movements mean that the till acted as a lubricant for the ice-sheet;
and the clayey element, especially, co-operating in many cases with the
pent-up subglacial waters, must have greatly facilitated the onward
progress of the ice." He concludes, therefore, that the onward movement
of the vast ice-sheet greatly exceeded that of the main part of the
ground moraine, the ice-sheet slipping over the till, the whole being
in some degree analogous to that of a great land-slip. "In both cases
the progress of a somewhat yielding and mobile mass is facilitated by an
underlying clayey layer saturated with water."
_New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania._
West of New England the glacial phenomena over the northern part of the
United States are equally marked all the way to the Missouri River, and
the boundary-line of the glaciated region can be traced with little
difficulty. It emerges from New York Bay on Staten Island and enters New
Jersey at Perth Amboy. A well-formed moraine covers the northern part
of Staten Island, and upon the mainland marks the boundary from Perth
Amboy, around through Raritan, Plainfield, Chatham, Morris, and Hanover,
to Rockaway, and thence in a southwesterly direction to Belvidere, on
the Delaware River. That portion of New Jersey lying north of this
serpentine line of moraine hills is characterised by the presence of
transported boulders, by numerous lakes of evident glacial origin, and by
every other sign of glacial action, while south of it all these peculiar
characteristics are absent. The observant passenger upon the railroad
trains between New York and Philadelphia can easily recognise the
moraine as it is passed through on the Pennsylvania Railroad at Metuchen
and on the Bound Brook Railroad at Plainfield. Near Drakestown, in
Morris County, there is a mass of blue limestone measuring, as exposed,
thirty-six by thirty feet, and which was quarried for years before
discovering that it was a boulder brought with other drift material from
many miles to the northwest and lodged here a thousand feet above the sea.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account