SKETCH OF GEORGE FREDERICK WRIGHT. 259 



bearing upon glacial work he read, and as early as 1876 we find 

 his observations extendedly reported in the Proceedings of the 

 Boston Society of Natural History, under the titles of Some Re- 

 markable Gravel Ridges in the Merrimac Valley, and the Karnes 

 and Moraines of New England. In this he showed that he had 

 found a clew to a most important kind of glacial deposits which 

 had heretofore been misunderstood." While he was engaged in 

 preparing this paper Mr. Clarence King gave him information 

 concerning the terminal moraine south of New England, which 

 directed his attention to that quarter ; and after that, he says, in 

 the preface to his great work on the Ice Age in North America, 

 the subject was never out of his mind, and all his summer months 

 were devoted, under favorable conditions, to the collection of field- 

 notes regarding it. Four seasons were given to making himself 

 familiar with the glacial phenomena of New England ; after which 

 he was invited by Prof. Lesley to survey, in company with the late 

 Prof. H. Carvill Lewis, the boundary of the glaciated area across 

 Pennsylvania to the border of Ohio. The report of this work 

 constitutes Volume Z in the publications of the Second Pennsyl- 

 vania Geological Survey. 



In 1881 Prof. Wright became Professor of New-Testament 

 Exegesis in Oberlin Theological Seminary. Almost the first 

 question he asked after his arrival in Oberlin was a geological 

 one : " What is the age of the canon of Plum Creek ? " Plum 

 Creek is a modest stream enough, but Prof. Wright made it and 

 its work in denudation, in his Ice Age in North America, the basis 

 of an important and interesting calculation concerning the an- 

 tiquity of the Great Ice Age. In a similar manner he made use 

 of the waterfalls of northern Ohio to illustrate the effect of glacial 

 action on the appearance of the landscape. In the summers of 

 1882 and 1883 he was engaged, with the co-operation of the West- 

 ern Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio, in continuing the 

 survey across Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana ; the results of which 

 work were given in his report to the society, and in an article 

 published in the American Journal of Science for July, 1883. 

 The report proved to be the most distinguished publication ever 

 made by the society. It was republished verbatim by the State 

 of Pennsylvania, and has been published in substance by two 

 other commonwealths. In it Prof. Wright described the spots 

 where seekers might most profitably look for the evidences of 

 man in glacial times, saying, " Man lived first below the glacial 

 limit, and fished upon the banks of streams which were periodi- 

 cally gorged with the spring freshets of the Glacial period, and 

 during those floods lost his spear-heads, his hammers, his axes, 

 and his scrapers, where they became mingled with the gravel 

 brought down from up stream." Palteolithic implements have 



