Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/358

344 place, the block when released—i. e., by the melting of the ice—from the power that transported and placed it must have slid down and found a resting-place at the bottom of what is now a contiguous salt marsh; and, third, the circumstance that all the edges and angles of the block are as sharp and free from abrasion—which last is also true of its entire surface—as if it were but recently lifted from its original bed by the most modern and careful system of quarrying. It could not obviously, therefore, in its process of transportation have been rolled or tumbled about to any great extent; which conclusion in turn suggests that its movement after the first displacement was a lifting up to its present elevation, and that it was not subsequently transported to any great distance laterally. The extension of the ledge on which this great block rests having been largely broken up and removed through its use as a quarry, what might have been evidence confirmatory of this effect is now no longer obtainable. That it would have been perfectly practicable, with the requisite labor and machinery and large expenditure, to have quarried this block, and then have lifted it up and blocked it in its present position is not to be denied; but the idea that any such thing has been done, and for no practical purpose, is perfectly untenable. The surrounding country is very thinly populated, and the rock was in position long before any quarry (for the obtaining of rough stone for railroad construction) was worked in any immediate vicinity.

To travelers on the New London and New Haven Railroad this testimonial of the forces operative in a former geological age, by reason of its close proximity to the track, is clearly discernible on the right-hand side going west and the left-hand going east, and constitutes a most striking and picturesque object. Its obvious novelty, which has thus far undoubtedly saved it from destruction or displacement at the hands of workmen and vandals, may, it is to be hoped, continue to constitute its protection in the future, although as an object of attraction and interest to tourists and scientific men it is eminently worthy of care by the managers of the railroad company.

Figs. 5 and 6 are photographic reproductions of a huge bowlder, curiously disrupted on the land of Mr. Edward Atkinson, at Mattapoisett, on Buzzard's Bay, Mass., and having the following dimensions: Maximum height, 42 feet; measurement through the middle of the passage between the two fragments, from one side to the other in a straight line, 36 feet; average width of the crack between the two fragments at the level of the ground, 3½ feet; present surface area of the detached fragment, which has in part been quarried away, 462 feet.

To the trained geologist, the foregoing and all similar accounts