Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1904-10-21

M. Grace Blnklam III Boston Tran
script
Just why Boston has been overlooked
this fall in the distribution of frost colors
it would be hard to say. The leaves long
ago turned red about New Bedford. The
shores of the Merrimac. and the New
Hampshire lakes have been all ablaze with
crimson and scarlet. In the western part
of Massachusetts and Vermont. the Gold
en- browns and dark crimsons of the oaks.
the oranges and yellows of the naples.
were never surpassed in richness and
beauty of color. 1t is curious. indeed,
that the Boston section should thus have
been left i'm such a Quakerish garb of
dusty green's and browns.
We must get away from the city ia
really enjoy this autumn. What could be
more delightful than a field lesson I'm the
terraced town of Brattleboro! Just i'm
agine yourself perched on the top of one
of the tallyhos and carriages winding
back and forth, for the greater part of
two days, among the terraces that border
the Connecticut and its tributaries here.
threading the foothills of the Green
Mountains along those drives for which
Brattleboro has been famous for nearly
n century, where every advance affords
some new and seemingly more charming
outlook upon the world about. Just i'm
agine yourself gazing upon an ever
changing grouping of streams and hills
pu1pled in the distance, now yelled i'm
mist, now distinct and clear, with each
tint and hue everywhere softened and
blended by the yellowish-gray sky over
head into a harmony most eXquisitely
rich and tender! Just imagine that from
this unriNalled page of nature the mys-
terry of ten thousand years is being de-
ciphered, and perhaps you will be ready
to say with Fanny Fern: 1T is strange to
me that everybody doesn't live in Brat
tleboro. There is not an ugly walk or
drive in the whole town. I'm exhausted
admitting things. l sat on the coachman's
box as we drove along, and forbade him
to tell me any more about Broad Brook
roads or cascades or waterfalls until |
could bear it. That is the state I'm in.
and Vermont is answerable for it,
Journeying westward across Massa-
chusetts one comes in contact with many
things which since the days of Agassiz
have become associated in his mind with
a great volume of slowly moving ice
which for NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. a time
must have accumulated faster than it
melted to attain its thickness, and for
another indefinite period must have melt
ed away faster than it gathered until 1t
disappeared. Agassiz saw the hardest
rocks on the greatest heights rounded
and polished as If some vast weight had
passed over them; he saw them scratch
ed as by a file of angular stones dragged
along: huge hounds of loose earth were
symmetrically rounded; heaped i'm lines
along the coast were ridges of great bowl
ders and rock debris as if there had in
htNh pttl AHC dulllplilS- kIbulll VI llt
ages; lakes and ponds %abounded in GER
tain belts, though not found elsewhere;
rocks weighing tons We're scattered all
about as if thrown from their parent
lodges by some Titan's hand; nicely form
ed river beds extended across the country
through banks of air and terminated in
broad deltas of sand within lakes of air.
Agassiz had seen the work of moving ice
in Switzerland. He knew ice had been
here. 1t had melted away. He laid down
the prRmiSeS nf tha glacial theory from,
which perfectly satisfactory deductions
have been derived by later workers.
Previous to Agassiz, however, other
premises had Seen assumed and other de-
auctions made more or less satisfying to
their supporters. And here is the diff
ficulty that is continually besetting SCI
entific progress and destroying the faith
of the public.
We all know with what delight the pop
ular lecturer upon chemistry mixes chlo-
rine enough to poison a dozen people
with sodium enough to kill as many more
and then himself calmly eats all of the
harmless salt which results. Obversely
we all know how the scholiast was wont
to combine two simple, accepted truths in
such a way through the syllogism as to
produce some unusual conclusion contain
ing poison enough to kill the work of a
generation of thinkers. 1t is so easy. so
convincing to make deductions which af-
ter all can be correct only so far as the
premises are correct, 1t is so hard to
use that patient observation, that appre-
hensive reasoning power, that vivid i'm
agination necessary to attain the cor
rect premises that quite naturally most
of us are coupled in making deductions.
Much credit should be given Professor
Davis of Harvard college for his careful
study of the terraces of New England and
the very conclusive theory that has re-
suited. Certainly for him who sees and
understands it is only a step from the
falling apple to the law of gravitation,
from what is to what has been, from the
known to the related unknown. The Bal
astier brook, such a brook as one might
find in almost every town, presents all
the life of a river on so small a scale that
it can be comprehended almost at a
glance. Far up on the hillside the silvery
cascades are cutting back the hard rock
face as surely as at Niagara. Down the
slope the swift stream is cutting down
it's deep valley with the same kind of
tools and in the same way as the Millers
river is making it's long gorge. On the
lowland near its mouth the brook is
swinging from side to side, forming
curves and cusps, oxbows and islands, ce-
menting the islands again to the mainland
and fashioning its shores into terraces
Just as the older Connecticut has been
doing for thousands of years. And yet
the step from the present back to the
past has been a difficult one to take. The
ice was here. 1t has melted, and the ter
races, supposed to be proofs of the great
volume of water resulting therefrom, were
the SUBJECTS of study before the school
of science at the last lesson. The class
was under the immediate guidance of
Miss Fisher of the Geological Department
at Wellesley, to whom a vote of thanks
was extended for the valuable lesson she
had afforded. Miss RISER has made an
especial study of this region and pre-
scented the latest theory concerning the
formation of the terraces.
Brattleboro is one of the best places
in the world to study terraces, because
three streams. the Connecticut, the West
River and milestone Brook have here
cut into the glacial drift, thus affording
an unusual amount of material from
which to draw differences.
Professor Barton said of the old the
DRY that it had assumed a broad stream
of water fed by the melting glacier and
whose flood plain extended from rock
bank to rock bank, a distance here of
from fifteen to twenty miles in places,
Either by the diminution of the water or
the re-elevation of the land, the river
and it's food plains had sunk to success
sively lower levels, until the present bed
was reached, leaving behind its old food
plains in the form of terraces which
should be found in pairs of practically
the same level, parallel to the rivers he'd
and should slope toward the sea. Such
is not the case, however, and there are
besides other difficulties which this hy-