The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1884-12-11
A TEN THOUSAND TON BOWL
DER.
Rocks as Large as a Small Cottage Scat
tere+l Over Long Island and
Gonnenfieut.

Connecticut.
Erratic 5owlders is a geological term
to indicate large rocks found on the
surface of the ground at distance from
the place of their origin. Some of these
displaced rocks are known to exist at a
distance of hundreds of miles from their
former location-lke many that are
found in this State and on Long Island
and in Massachusetts,. The theory of
the geologists is that these great rocks,
which are in many instances as large as
small cottage, were carried on moving
masses of ice during that indefinite and
mysterious time called the glacial Pc
riod. Some of them were so deposited
by the melting or breaking ice as to
leave them to this day curiously bal
anced on the point of contact on which
they rest. These, known as rocking
stones and 'balanced rocks" are in
some instances SO nicely poised that,
ponderous as they are, some of them can
be sensibly rocked with some ex-
ertion of strength by the hand, while
it would require much greater force
/
anced rocks there are several examples.
not only abroad, but in New England.
A notable one exists in Lanesborough,
in Berkshire County, Mass. Connecti-
cut is well sprinkled with the iee-borne
powders, though we believe our State
has few or no rocking stones. One of
the largest of the bowlders-and it is
thought to be the biggest one in the
country-is in this State, in the New
London county town of Montville, on
the west side of the Thames River, be-
| tween Norwich and New London. This
big rock has just been photographed. 1t
is locally known as the Shehegan rock,
and is forty-five feet high and seventy
feet long. By the best engineering esti-
mates its weight is 10000 tons. That is
pretty solid load, even for a travelling
iceberg to carry. Ages of rain and frost
have told On it by splitting off big frag-
ments-one of which is sixty feet long
and has an average thickness of twelve
feet-its estimated weight, 1900 tons,
considerably exceeding that of the en-
tire rock called Pierre a Martini the
largest of the granite powders among
| the limestone lodges of the Jura Noun
| tains in Switzerland. The next largest
rock of the glacial deposits in New En-
| gland is said to lie at the foot of a
mountain in Nottingham, in southeast
ern New Hampshire; it is called the
Churchill rock, and is sixty-two feet
long, forty feet wide, and fifty feet high;
but its weight is believed to be 1000
tons less than that of the Montville rock.
The erratic granite bowlder out of which
was hewn the statue of Peter the Great,
at st. Petersburg, was forty-two feet
long, twenty-seyen feet broad, and
twenty-one feet high. 1t is said the fa-
nous Plymouth Rock ON which the Pill.
/ grims landed is an erratic bowlder OF
syenite, that was moved by the ice from
Roxbury in Boston. Indeed the New
England coast is plentifully strewn with
these large rocky visitors from the north
and good many, no doubt, lie sub
merged in the waters of Long Island
Sound and of other sounds and bays tc
the eastward as far as Cape Cod,
forming no considerable portion of the
hidden dangers to navigation along the
New England coast. Hartford Times