56 



seeu to the east of him the great wall of the ice front extending sonth 

 toward Kentucky, while toward the west it would have been seeu in the 

 distance stretchiny away toward the southwest. For hundreds of miles 

 to the east and west, and for 2,CHJ0 miles or more to the north, the glaring, 

 white desert of snow-covered ice, like that seen in the interior of Green- 

 land by Nansen and Peary, would have appeared, stretching away out of 

 sight, with not a thing under the sun to relieve its cold monotony." 



By the incursions of the various ice sheets all the so-called "drift 

 soils" of northern and central Indiana were accumulated where they lie. 

 Derived, as they were, in pai'l. from the A'arious primary and igneous 

 rocks in the far north, ground tine and thoroughly mixed as they were by 

 the onward moving force of a luighty glacier, they are unusually rich in 

 all the necessary constituents of plant food. Principally to them does 

 Indiana owe her present high rank as an agricultural state. All the 

 level and more fertile counties lie within this drift covered area, and its 

 southern limit marks, practically, the bomidary of the great corn and 

 wheat producing portidu of the State. But few of the present inhabitants 

 of Indiana realize how much they owe to this glacial invasion of our 

 domain iu the misty past. It not only determined the character of the 

 soil, the contour of the coimtry and the minor lines of drainage, but in 

 manifold other ways had to do with tlie pleasure, the health and the 

 lirosperity of the present population. 



When the tinal ice sheet gradually receded from the area now com- 

 prising Indiana, the surface of the glaciated portion was left covered with 

 a sheet of drift or till composed mainly of clay, gravel and lioulders, and 

 varying in thickness from one to 400 feet or more. Over the greater por- 

 tion of this area the surface of the drift was comparatively level, but in 

 the northern fourth of the State it was in numerous places heaped up in 

 extensive ridges and hills, due to irregular dumping along the margins 

 and between the lobes of the melting ice sheets. In the hollows or low 

 places between those ridges and hills the waters of the melting ice accu- 

 mulated and formed those hundreds of fresh water lakes Avhich are today 

 the most beautiful and expressive features of the landscape in the region 

 wherein they abound. At first all of those yet in existence were much 

 larger than now. while for every one remaining a score have become 

 extinct. 



A new vegetation soon sprang up over the land left desolate and 

 barren by the retreating ice. The climate gradually became much 



