Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/310

edged, however, his own inability to account for their presence, but ingenuously claimed that

Ignorance is preferable to error. It may, therefore, be asked why may not these rocks have been created where they are now found, or, again, why may they not have been thrown up by earthquakes or volcanoes?

Groping though this writer may have been, it is questionable if his ignorance was not preferable to the kind of knowledge manifested by a writer in the American Journal of Science two years previously, who had accounted for the drift on the supposition that the earth's revolution, amounting to 1,500 feet a second, was suddenly checked. This, he thought, would result in the whole mass of the surface water rushing forward with inconceivable velocity until overcome by opposing obstacles or exhausted by continual friction and the counterbalancing power of gravitation. The Pacific Ocean would thus rush over the Andes and the Alleghenies into the Atlantic, which would, in the meantime, be sweeping over Europe, Asia and Africa.

A few hours would cover the entire surface of the earth, excepting, perhaps, the vicinity of the poles, with one rushing torrent in which the fragments of disintegrated rocks, earth, and sand would be carried along with the wreck of animal and vegetable life in one all but liquid mass.

The first geological survey of an entire state carried through at public expense was that of Massachusetts, authorized by legislative enactment in 1830. Dr. Edward Hitchcock, then professor of chemistry and natural history in Amherst College, was selected to carry out the work. The report presented early in 1832 was, therefore, a document of unusual importance and, to a certain extent, epoch-making. Much that is of interest is to be found within its pages, but we must limit ourselves to that relating purely to the distribution of the numerous erratics for which the state is noted.

It is but natural that this drift should have been attributed to the Noachian deluge, when one considers that Hitchcock's training was that of a clergyman. Speaking of that about Cape Ann, he wrote:

It can not fail to impress every reasoning mind with the conviction that a deluge of tremendous power must have swept over this cape. Nothing but a substratum of syenite could have stood before its devastating energy.

This observation is of importance, since here, for the first time, Hitchcock put himself on record in a line of investigation in which he became more widely known than in any other, with the possible exception of that relating to the fossil footprints of the Connecticut Valley.

In 1836 there was established a state geological survey of Maine, with C. T. Jackson, of Boston, at its head. Jackson's views on the glacial deposits, as expressed in the annual reports, were perhaps not more crude than those of the average geologist of his day. The 'horsebacks' (ridges of glacial gravel) were regarded by him as of diluvial