The color of unweathered till depends on that of the materials of
which it is composed. Where red sandstones have contributed
largely to its making, as over the Triassic sandstones of the
eastern states and the Algonkian sandstones about Lake Superior,
the drift is reddish. When derived in part from coaly shales, as
over many outcrops of the Pennsylvanian, it may when moist be
almost black. Fresh till is normally a dull gray or bluish, so
largely is it made up of the grindings of unoxidized rocks of
these common colors.
Except where composed chiefly of sand or coarser stuff,
unweathered till is often exceedingly dense. Can you suggest by
what means it has been thus compacted? Did the ice fields of the
Glacial epoch bear heavy surface moraines like the medial and
lateral moraines of valley glaciers? Where was the greater part of
the load of these ice fields carried, judging from what you know
of the glaciers of Greenland?
BOWLDERS OF THE DRIFT. The pebbles and bowlders of the drift are
in part stream gravels, bowlders of weathering, and other coarse
rock waste picked up from the surface of the country by the
advancing ice, and in part are fragments plucked from ledges of
sound rock after the mantle of waste had been removed. Many of the
stones of the till are dressed as only glacier ice can do; their
sharp edges have been blunted and their sides faceted and scored.
We may easily find all stages of this process represented among
the pebbles of the till. Some are little worn, even on their
edges; some are planed and scored on one side only; while some in
their long journey have been ground down to many facets and have
lost much of their original bulk. Evidently the ice played fast
and loose with a stone carried in its basal layers, now holding it
fast and rubbing it against the rock beneath, now loosening its
grasp and allowing the stone to turn.
Bowlders of the drift are sometimes found on higher ground than
their parent ledges. Thus bowlders have been left on the sides of
Mount Katahdin, Maine, which were plucked from limestone ledges
twelve miles distant and three thousand feet lower than their
resting place. In other cases stones have been carried over
mountain ranges, as in Vermont, where pebbles of Burlington red
sandstone were dragged over the Green Mountains, three thousand
feet in height, and left in the Connecticut valley sixty miles
away. No other geological agent than glacier ice could do this
work.
The bowlders of the drift are often large. Bowlders ten and twenty
feet in diameter are not uncommon, and some are known whose
diameter exceeds fifty feet. As a rule the average size of
bowlders decreases with increasing distance from their sources.
Why?
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