Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/235

of rubbish that were left there and given their even form when the whole of New England was buried in a deep sheet of moving ice, as Greenland is now (Fig. 3.) They give no clew to the source of the bombs and ashes. If we go west or east of the ash-bed Fig. 2. ledge, there are high ridges, six or seven hundred feet above the valley, with gentle slopes on the east, and bold, rocky cliffs, descending to a long stony talus on the west. The one next east of us is Mount Lamentation; it may be well seen eastward from the railroad between Hartford and Meriden while the train is passing a pond. The ash-bed ledge can be seen at the same time under the southern end of Lamentation, but it is not a conspicuous object a mile away. Lamentation and its fellows are not the least like volcanoes, and yet they confirm the belief that volcanoes must have once existed hereabouts; for these high ridges are of lava, the edges of great tilted lava-flows that were poured out at intervals during the deposition of hundreds and thousands of feet of sandstones. Fig. 3. Our ash-bluff is indeed only a part of one of these parallel lava ridges; when traced north and south lava may be found lying on the ash-bed. Lamentation is higher, because its lava-flow is much thicker than that in the ash-bed ridge, and therefore has not been worn down so low. On the back of these flows, at one point and another, may be seen the slaggy, bubbly surface of the lava, like that poured out of Vesuvius or any other modern volcano; but these ancient lavas have been deeply buried in