Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1894-10-15
THE GLACIAL MTLESTONES,
ORIGIN AND NATURE OF THESE
ERRATIC BowLDERS.
The Soil Has Been Slowly Forming
Over Them Since the Great Ice
Age-Stony Aliens.

"HE following is an extract
from "Some Records of the
i Ice Age About New York, "
by L. Mitchell Prudden, NJ.
d., in Harper's 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 wanderings here
abouts where the ground is being
cleared for building, he will observe.
almost everywhere, where much soil
and earth and gravel are being dug
out and carted of to clear the rock
surfaces in preparation for blasting,
that larger and smaller rounded rocks
are found imbedded in the gravel.
They are usually too round and awk.
ward in shape to be useful in the
masonry even of the foundations of
buildings. Many of them are too large
to be shoveled into the carts and car.
ried away 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 dumping ground where
land, as they say, is being "made."
If one looks little closely at these
despised 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 rub
bing sometime somewhere.
1t is curious turning back in the
books to the record of time only
few decades ago, to read the specu.a'
tions of the learned rs to the origin
and nature of these erratic bowlders,
which, from their noteworthy shape
and their structure, often So different
from that of the rocks over which
they lie scattered, early attracted at
tention. Some thought that they
NUT have been cast up out of dis
tant volcano in an earlier time and
fell scattered here. For some they
were rounded by the wesh of Noahs
food. and swept by its fierce torrents
into alien regions. Otners sank-in
theory-the earth's crust thereabouts
for many feet, and--in theory still
let enormous icebergs from some dis
tant arctic region drift over here, and
melting, drop their ice-borne freight
of rocks. Some would have it that
the earth was once surrounded by a
separate rock shell which somehow
came to grief and left its shattered
remnants down broadcast. Others,
still more dramatic, worked up their
facts and fancies to the point of as
suming collision with comet. The
record, craven on the rocks told the
true story at last, however, when the
people got ready to read it.
These rounded rocks or bowlders--
these erratics, waits and aliens--are,
as well-known to-day, the tornof and
transported fragments of rock masses
which the great ice mantle brought
down here during the cold weather
so long ago and incontinently dropped
when the climate changed and the
sun swept its borders back toward
Greenland aud the pole. Many OF
these erratics still bear bruises and
scratches testifying to their fierce en-
counters with the old bed rock 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
wreckage, covered in by soil later
formed, sharing their secrets with the
rootlets of vanished generations of
plants and trees, until at last another
alien, Italian or Celt mayhap, breaks in
upon their seclusion with pick and
shovel and rolls them ignominiously
away. Then, at the SCARED rock sur
faces, the steam-drill pecks viciously,
puny successors to the gigantic sculp
tor of the old ice age, whose records
it and its explosive allies soon erase.