The Wichita daily eagle., 1894-10-18
MILEsToNEs OF THE GLACIER.

Prom Harpers Magazine.
Many of the glacial traces about
New York are buried up by the soil
which has been slowly forming over
them since the end of the great ice age.
If, however, one fingers in his wander
ings herea bouts where the ground is
being cleared for building, he will OBJ
serve, almost everywhere, where much
soil and earth and gravel are being
dug out and carted off to clear the rocl.
surfaces in preparation for blasting,
that larger and smaller rounded rocks
are found embedded in the gravel.
They are usually too round and awk-
ward in shape to be useful in the ma
sonry even of the foundations of build
ings. Many of them are too large to be
shoveied into the carts and carried away v
with the dirt and gravel. And so one
usually sees them rolled off on one
side, out of the way. on the barred rock
surfaces, until these are freed from
soil, when they too are hoisted up and
dragged off to some convenient dump
ing-ground where land, as they say, i
being made"
If one looks little closely at these
Aespised powders he will find that
many of them are of entirely different
character from any of our native rocks.
Sometimes they are rock called trap.
like that which makes the Palisades;
sometimes rock like that which is at
home in regions many miles to the
north and west of New York. And
they are rounded and smoothed in a
way which indicates an enormous
amount of wear and rubbing sometime
somewhere.
1t is curious turning back in the
books to the record of time only 4
few decades ago, to read the specula-
tions of the learned as to the origin
and nature of these erratic powders,
which, from their noteworthy shape
and their structure, often so different.
from that of the rocks over which they.
lie scattered, early attracted attention.
Some thought that they must have
been cast up out of a distant volcano
in an earlier time, and fell scattered
here. For some they were rounded by
the wash of Noah's flood, and swept by
its fierce torrents into alien regions.
Others sank-in theory-the earth's
crust hereabouts for many feet, and
in theory still-let enormous cebergs
from some distant arctic region drift
over here, and melting, drop their ice
borne freight of rocks. Some would
have il that the earth was once sur
rounded by separate rocky shell
.h 70 r--fnf and left
its shattered remnants sown broadcast.
Others, still more dramatic, worked up
their facts and fancies to the point OF
assuming collision with comet. The
record craven on the rocks told the
true story at last. however, when the
people got ready to read If,
These rounded rocks or bowlderS-
these erratics. waits and aliens-are
as we well know to-day. the tOrn-otf
and transported fragments Of rock
masses which the great ice mantle
brought down here from the back
country during the cold weather 50
long ago, and incontinentlv dropped
when the climate changed and the sun
swept its borders back towards Green
land and the pole. Many OF these
erratics still bear bruises and scratches
,estifying to their fierce encounters
with the old bedrock along which the
relentless ice mass ground them IN
their journey toward the coast Here
they have lain, these stony aliens
through all the long ages, buried up
with other glacial wrecllage, covered
In bv soil later formed. sharing their
secrets with the rootlets of vanished
generations Of plants and trees until
~ last another alien. Italian or Celt
navhap. breaks in upon their Seclu-
sion with pick and shovel and rolls
them ignominiouslv away. Then, al
the SCARED rock surfaces the steam
drill peclls viciously, puny successor 70
the gigantic sculptor Of the old ice
ape. whose records II and its explosive
I