Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1885-10-15

! OF ghtterlLg, Stoneless sand. No one
knows who all the owners arc bat
there IS memory of a Ratchet faced
New Yorker who came out here years
ago, and went home with acres
enough of 1t on paper 70 back his credit
/ to an almost unlimited amount had
the land been worth anything.
4 Nv hat made Connecticut's Slhara9"
smllingly re echoed Yale professor
the other day "Why, that was once
the shore of New Haven harbor, and
1t got left some thirty miles up in the
woods.
The Yale man had Just returaed
| from his summer vacation, and, as
hard study has not vet begun, he was
in good humor. 1--WE must go back,
/ said he, ITO the Mesozic or middle life
period, close 10 the Palaeozoic or most
ancient forms of life, after the time
when fossils and shells fourished,
and al the Tune when the footprints of
birds and great reptiles began to ap>
| pear. Connecticut you know, abounds
with these tellta.e tracks. About this
time, not to be too definite, the sun
which is tolerably busy, if you notice
hadn't begun to get in his work,
not to any great extent, and this part
OF the country was barred deeply in
GLACIERS. The Connecticut river then
/ lsed to run under the ice III channel
from what is now Middleton down TO
! the desert we are talking about, and
| there empty itself INTO what we call
New Haven's site and its surround
ings were then under water, and the
| headwaters of our beautiful bav were
! then in the bosom of that desert,
| thirty miles TO the north of us Rec
! ollect that this was long Iime before
man was thought OF, and the earth
was a peculiar sort of an institution,
| populated In some quarters only with
few species of great birds, amphibia,
and reptiles. Since then some of these
creatures probably went through the
necessary processes of evolution to
produce the superior order Of beings
that we are.
"You are a Darwinian, thenf
Most Yale men are, | reckon.
Well, you see, the glaciers, after some
hundreds of years, began to grow un
settled. Old Sol put on more steam,
and thev finally broke out in bergs
and started for the sea. Many of
them hereabout went across the sound
and struck ON the formation now
Known as Long Island There is a
deal of loose sand and gravel over
there, you know; much That is barren.
This is how we know that many of
the glaciers stopped there. When
they were lifted off from New Eng
land they hoated away millions and
millions of tons of sand and stones
that had been frozen to them, and they
scraped up as much more. That is
what makes some of the mountains
about us stick out so. The valleys took
a terrible securing. One of the glacial
streams was poured odt between the
great towers OF east aud west rocks,
which flank this city, cutting them
into their present prominence. AM
other stream was slowed off By the
cliffs and banks at Middletown, and
plowed up a channel to the south and
east toward Saybrook, and the Con
necticut river has run that way ever
since. Many Of the icebergs thawed
out on Long l sland and dropped their
sand and rocks there. They are there
still. "
"What has all this to do with our
desert?n
/ was going to say. Just before
the following periods Of depression
and elevation, until the earth assumed
its present form, there was regular
circus going on in New Haven harbor
! then up in our great sand plain. Yale
/ a,ll.o<1 ,r-~r,11 II k.n., iii 81
for an instantaneous Photographic
view of it. Over our beautiful city
the graceful Wegalichthys swan
peacefully up to the placid head waters
of the bay to sport among the big black
noses of the alligatorish Piesiosaurii,
which basked alternately in the water
and on shore, or occupied It's leisure
moments combating its colossal rival,
that monstrous lizard, the Ichthyos
aurnr. This latter ceature, we know,
! had peculiar ways of its own, such as
causing the tide to ebb by taking a
swallow of 500 or 600 gallons of water
at q gulp, or creating a tidal wave
| which might be felt on the Long Isl
and shore, by jumping into the sea at
full tide. The swift but heavy>footed
Paleotherium, the giant horae of those
days. used to trot down to the shores
of the bay and disport in its limpid
waters. Then there were other equal
! ly monstrous creatures. Some walked
as bipeds on feet that made tracks
twenty inches long and nearly as
broau, and with stride of three or
four feet, indicating height of FROM
ten feet TO rod Many of the forms
Of life were true reptiles of various
KINDS, and they were the ones which
scattered the bird>like, three -toed
tracks all over Connecticut These
| terrible lizards, the Dinosaurr, which
used to crawl about the head of the
harbor had the hinder feet three toed,
and walked usually like men, using
their fore feet for fighting. The great
fierce, but sloth~like Megateriums and
Megalonyxes infested the luxuriant
fern growths and mountains about
the bay and made life unpleasant for
/ their brethren the Mylodons, which
4 L