Excerpt from First Anniversary Address Before the Association of American Geologists: At Their Second Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, April 5, 1841

In the first place, these phenomena must have been the result of some very general force, or forces, Operating in the same gen eral direction; that is, southerly or southeasterly. For in a southerly direction has the drift been so uniformly carried, and the furrows and scratches on the rocks so generally point south erly, that the force which produced these effects must have tend ed thither. Our valleys have, indeed, considerably modified the course of the drift; but not enough to contradict the general statement. It would be strange if careful examination should not discover here, as in the Alps and in Great Britain, that the moving force had sometimes been exerted outwardly from the axes of high mountains. But I am not aware that as yet any facts Of importance in favor of such an opinion, have been brought to light. At any rate, the evidence of a force urging detritus and bowlders m a southerly, or more strictly in a southeasterly direction, is too marked, and has been noticed by too many inde pendent observers, over a breadth of nearly two thousand miles, to be doubted even though local exceptions should be discover ed - and such a uniformity of direction over so vast an area, in dicates a very general agency.

Secondly, this agency has operated at all altitudes, from the present sea level, and probably beneath it, to the height of three thousand or four thousand feet. In New England, most Of our hills and mountains, not excepting insulated peaks, not higher than three thousand feet, are distinctly smoothed and furrowed on their tops and northern slopes, and upon their east and west flanks, to the bottom of the lowest valleys. Dr. Jackson sup poses he has found transported detritus on Mount Katahdin, four thousand feet high. But he could discover no marks of this action at the summit of the White mountains of New Hampshire.

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