Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-04-27
TROPICAL PITTSBURG.
Effect of the Great Glaciers Upon Pre-
historic Pennsylvania.
AN ICE SHEET 5000 FEET THICK,
Which Destroyed the Forests Of Pennsyl-
Vania, in Which
TIE MAsTODON AND TAPIR ROAMED
WRITTEN FOR THE DISPATCH /,

WRITTEN FOR THE D1SPATCH.l
Near the villageof Newport, in the Beaver
Valley, the traveller on any one of the. four
railways that grid the stream may perceive
from the car windows large collection of
huge bowlders which appear to be distributed
in a wide belt that sweeps across the river
and extends up the steep bluff on the west
side.
To q casual observer who may not have
time to stop and give these rocks careful
examination, their smooth rounded surfaces
and general arrangement might suggest the
idea of some great food which swept down
from the hills, and tearing up the strata in
its course, scattered the fragments over the
plain. 10 one who may happen to have a
little knowledge of geology, a close inspec-
ton will remove the idea of local flood,
and reveal facts that make these bcwlders a
mystery and a wonder which science alone
can explain.
1t will be observed that they are COM
posed of granite, gneiss syenite and other
foreign materials, not found in their
natural position within 200 and in some in
stances 600 miles of the northern border of
Pennsylvania. Besides, it will be noticed
that they are rounded, snoothed and pol
ished as though the tabled giants of old had
amused themselves rolling such immense
fragments of the foundation of the Can
adas down across the present site of Lake
Erie and Ontario into what is at present
Pennsylvania. Science, which has but lit
tie respect for the fabulous or miraculous,
gives us better explanation of the presence
of these Immense masses of travelled for
eign material in the keystone State,
PREHISTORIC GLACIERS.
Noticing striking similarity in the dis
tribution of these powders, with the
moraines, or deposits of debris left by the
existing glaciers in the Alps in Europe and
the mountains Of Alaska in North America,
biologists assigned them to be the result of
prehistoric glaciers OF vast extent that
swept down from the hyperborean regions
tens of thousands of years ago, and carried
these vestiges of their mighty erosive power
from the mountains of the far north, and
scattered them along its course, leaving a
larger collection at the point, where, ac-
cording to a well-known law of terrestrial
motion, clearly defined, and logically ex-
plained by astronomy, the advance of the
devastating ice sheet was checked and
all at once its dissolution commenced in
melting process, that continued throughout
q very large interval of time, resulting IN
floods of unimaginable volume, that poured
down through every valley level with the
SUBMITS of the hills, and mixed and sifted
and redistributed the native materials of
the land, commingling them withI the
foreign materials transported by the great
glacier, leaving, as a result, strange mix
ture of sand and pebbles, commonly called
gravel, which covers the States north of the
mcraine, to depth of from to 20 feet, and
is in some places heaped up in hills and
ridges, called in glacial terminology-h
mocks or kames.
Select nalf bushel measure full of these
pebbles and bowlders, that with a mixture
of sand and clay form the great gravel de-
posit of the Northern States, and out of that
collection you can find a representative of
every geological formation from the
Devonian of Western New York TO the
Syenitic ranges of Labrador.
A wonderfully varied soil is that formed
from the decomposition of this mass. 1t is
q mixture of almost every known geological
formation, and is of great strength and fer
tilitE. AL, over the surface and frequently
imbedded in these gravel deposits, at con-
siderable depth immense boulders OF gran
ite and syenite are found, but the most re-
markable collection of such immense frag-
ments is at the line where the subsistence of
the glacier began, which line, or more scien-
tifcally speaking moraine, crosses the
Beaver river at the village of Newport, Just
above the borough of Wampum, as already
stated.