266 Review of the Glacial Theory. 



carefully consii.lerecl, to known physical laws as well as geological 

 phenomena." 



In this localit}'-, the drift consists of sand and gravel, which fills up 

 the old river troughs one hundred feet or more in depth, in which Ave 

 find, occasionally, banks of clay, loam, and sycamore trees and other 

 vegetation that now abound in this latitude and a few degrees farther 

 north, and less frequently the bones of the mammoth and other land 

 animals. The lower jaw of a mammoth, with a tooth in place, now 

 the property of this Society, was found in the gravel ridge (Ocean 

 Terrace, Prof ISTev/berry calls it) at Fourth street and Central Avenue, 

 when an excavation was being made for a sewer, at the depth of 

 aljout ten feet. The distribution of the sand and gravel and other 

 materials, including the formation of the elevated ridges and hillocks 

 in the bottom lands, which it has pleased Profess(;r Newberry and other 

 theorists upon a subsiding continent to call " ocean terraces and ocean 

 beaches" — all alike have the appearance of having been deposited by 

 a rapid current of fresh water flowing from the north. The total 

 absence of oceanic remains, in these ridges of sand, gravel and clay, 

 and the presence of land animals and plants of this and more northern 

 latitudes, seem to me to be conclusive on the subject. That jaw and 

 tooth of the mammoth, from Foarth street and Central avenue, are 

 alone sufficient to put to shame the whole theory of ocean terraces and 

 beaches, elucidated in the Ohio geology. We might easily imagine a 

 smile, on that old jaw in the case, at the idea that it was ever used to 

 crack shell fish, or that it was caught on a gravel bank, by the slow 

 approach of waters in the arm of an ocean. 



The sand and gravel beds and ridges, from here to the Gulf of 

 Mexico, bear the same evidences of deposition from rapidly flowing 

 streams of fresh water. The fossils from this locality abound in 

 Southern drift, as the fossils from more Northern climes abound in it 

 here. The Northern lakes are lined with beaclies, especially on the 

 Northern side, that are higher above the level of the ocean than the 

 highest hills in this vicinity. If we couple the facts determined by 

 Professor Dawson, with the phenomena as presented by the beaches 

 surrounding the lakes and the distribution of the sand and gravel from 

 the lakes to the Gulf, we may readily conceive how this Arctic current, 

 entering the Gulf of St. Lawrence freighted with icebergs from 

 Greeidand, would so increase the cold in post-pliocene times that the 

 St. Lawrence River and the river that led from the lakes to the 

 Hudson River Valley would be frozen up, and kept closed during the 

 summer season, while the lakes, losing but little by evaporation, would 

 continue slowly to rise until one great lake would occupy the central 



