Examined where the white maple and the apple tree were tripped over by the ice the other day at the railroad bridge. It struck them seven or eight feet from the ground, that being the height of the water, rubbed off the bark, and then bent flat and broke them. They were about ten inches in diameter, the maple partly dead before. I see where many trees have been wounded by the ice in former years. They have a hard time of it when a cake half a dozen rods in diameter and nearly two feet thick is floated and blown against them.
Just south of Derby’s Bridge lie many great cakes, some one upon another, which were stopped by the bridge and causeway, and a great many have a crust of the meadow of equal thickness - six inches to one foot - frozen to their under surfaces. Some of these are a rod in diameter, and when the ice melts, the meadow where they are landed will present a singular appearance. I see many also freshly deposited on the Elfin Burial-Ground, showing how that was formed. The greater part of those hummocks there are probably, if not certainly, carried by the ice, though I now see a few small but thick pieces of meadow four or five feet broad without any ice or appearance of its having been attached to them. This is a powerful agent at work. Many great cakes have lodged on a ridge of the meadow west of the river here, and suggest how such a ridge may be growing from year to year.