To the Editor of the American Journal of Science, &c.

Sir,
I have lately examined a singular disruption in the earth, discovered a few days since in the northerly part of an extensive meadow in this town, about ten rods from Deerfield river.

The soil on the spot is alluvial, consisting of a dry, rich, vegetable mould, with a large intermixture of sand; and the field, elevated 14 feet above the bed of the river, is annually mowed. A valley encircles the ruptured spot on the east, south, and west, only five feet lower, yet so marshy and soft, as to render draining necessary to make it passable; and immediately back of this valley, on the south, rises a hill 100 feet high, at whose foot are several springs. North of the rupture, also, between it and the river, is a gradual descent of three feet: indeed, the ground slopes from it on every side except the northwest.

A fissure one inch wide and fourteen deep, forming an almost perfect ellipsis, whose diameters are 9 and 5½ rods, marks the exterior limit of the convulsion. Within this curve are several others nearly concentric to it, some forming a quarter, and some half an ellipsis, and near the longer axis are others, running in various directions. On this transverse diameter, which lies near the highest part of the swell above described, and in its longest direction, or parallel to the river, the greatest effect of the convulsion appears. The earth, to the depth it has frozen the past winter, 14 inches, is broken on a straight line above 6 rods, and the south edge of the fissure, having been forced up, overlaps the other, three feet. Where one edge does not thus overreach, the tables of earth, which at a small distance resemble masses of ice, are raised up so that their faces form an isosceles triangle, leaving a cavity beneath. About the extremities of the transverse axis, is also an overlapping of two feet, which continues nearly two rods on the curve each way from the axis, and in most places is double, overreaching internally and externally, exhibiting likewise, some irregularity where the compressing forces acted at right angles to each other. The edges of these elevated masses of earth, which are yet frozen, are quite smooth, and the angles but little fractured. I have dug into the earth about four feet underneath the longer axis of the ellipsis, and thrust down a bar in other places, but cannot perceive that the soil has been moved below where it was frozen. It is, however, not the most favourable season for ascertaining this fact.

Every appearance on the spot will justify this conclusion, that the frozen surface of the earth around, has pressed with great force from every direction to this ellipsis as a centre; for, were every fissure in the ellipsis to be filled by replacing the earth, there must remain on its longer axis and at the extremities of this, an overplus of surface two feet wide.

The month of February last has been unusually cold. Its mean temperature in Deerfield, by Fahrenheit's scales, is as follows.

7h. A. M.1½h. P. M.10h. P. M.
6°24°11°

The extremes were 25° below, and 49° above zero. On the last day but one of the month, the cold suddenly relaxed; and on the 1st and 2d of March, a heavy and warm rain succeeded. This produced an uncommon rise in Deerfield river, and on the 3d of March, it had overflowed the ground where the above described phenomenon occurred, and did not recede from it for 24 hours. Its greatest depth there, was five feet. The snow was nearly one foot deep when the flood happened, and being a nonconductor of heat, the temperature of the surface of the ground was not probably much changed from its state in February, until the water came in contact with it. It may not be amiss to give the state of the thermometer on the last of February and beginning of March.

7h. A. M.1½h. P. M.10h. P. M.Wind, weather, &c.
Feb. 27th,15°below 0.28°above 0.32°above 0.South,clear.
28th,31above45——31——do.do.
March 1st,29——46——37——N. E.rain.
2d,46——49——37——do.do.
3d,30——35——29——do.rain & clear.

On the third of March, about sunset, some lads were sailing near the spot where the disruption appears, and saw the water in considerable agitation, with much bubbling, and at short intervals it was thrown up in several places to the height of 3 or 4 feet. They saw no rupture in the earth, although they came within two or three rods of the spot, and state the water to have been two feet deep. About one o'clock on the morning of March 4th, Mr. Seth Sheldon and family, living one mile south from this spot, and being awake, were alarmed by a loud report from the north, by which their house and furniture were much shaken. They compared the sound, though louder by far than they had ever heard from this cause, to that of a cracking in the earth by frost in severe weather. Some others living rather nearer the spot, were awakened by the same report. That the rupture in the earth was made at that time is probable, though not certain.