TWENTY-FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 105 



ter, R. Hay, S. W. Williston, and G. H. Failyer, so that this Academy is pretty sure 

 of their existence. The writer has, since then, examined an area in northern Potta- 

 watomie county, as well situate for expecting striae as the one in Nemaha: a north 

 and south ridge, with bowlders of greenstone and quartzite scattered over both east 

 and west flanks, and a hard limestone under a thin surface soil; the bottom of the 

 soil undoubted glacial hardpan, four to eight inches thick, with pebbles in its paste. 

 I uncovered some 20 square yards, but not a sign of striae. Why? Because the lime- 

 stone, which weathers in layers of an inch or two in thickness, had, under the action 

 of the moisture, the carbonic acid, iron, etc., influencing its upper layer, become 

 amalgamated with the hardpan, being soft, pasty, and ferruginous. In places 

 this condition had penetrated to second and third layers of the stone. There were 

 no striae there because time has been an important factor. In samples of the striae 

 of Nemaha county, similar causes have begun to act in the direction of obliteration. 

 Grooves have become channels for nature's operations, and their sides have begun 

 to yield to the chemical agencies, and the character of the stride is becoming ob- 

 scured. It is, then, mainly due to the fact that the glacial operations in Kansas 

 were made on the first part of the ice age that these characteristic striae are few and 

 poorly preserved in Kansas. 



The phenomena we know as moraines should be recognized by their agglomer- 

 ations of foreign bowlders. Most persons in northeast Kansas know of the exis- 

 tence of these bowlders — red quartzite, granite, hornblendic greenstone, etc. — but 

 the order of their deposit is not plain. The writer, however, recognizes in three or 

 four places where the deposit is clearly morainic: One west of the Little Blue, in 

 Washington county, where the bowlders (not a very extensive deposit) rest on the 

 Dakota sandstone; another 10 miles south of Topeka, on the Missouri Pacific rail- 

 way, where the bowlders are strung out north and south for more than a mile; a 

 third is west by south from Lawrence, where a long ridge from east to west marks 

 where the glacier rested and dropped on its southern edge this heavy body of trans- 

 ported bowlders. It is manifestly the terminal moraine, but it is covered with loess 

 and soil, and only on its southern side, in a few shallow ravines, is its true character 

 seen. It was first shown to the writer by our late friend, Joseph Savage. Again, 

 the ice seems to have rested its weather edge on the bluffs of the Kaw valley, west of 

 Wamego. The bluffs rise precipitously, and on their precipitous front a single 

 bowlder in more than a mile is all that tells of the ice; but once on the top, the soil 

 is full of them, large and small, some just revealing a polished surface, some stand- 

 ing a foot or two high, many of them many tons in weight. Why only one bowlder 

 on the south front? Because the erosion of the Kaw valley, which the glacier then 

 dammed, has been going on so long, that much is carried away, and the later alluvia 

 have covered the rest. The real southern limit of this moraine is seen in the bowlders 

 on the bluffs of the south side of the Kaw valley, in Wabaunsee county. 



Again, morainic material dammed the Kaw valley above Lawrence, and the rem- 

 nant of it on the south side may be seen a few miles above the city, where the Santa 

 Fe railway runs on a shelf of the moraine above the river. 



Near Kansas City, the bluffs on both sides of the river are rocky and i^recipitous, 

 with fillings of loess in preglacial ravines. But, between North Lawrence and North 

 Topeka, most of the hills bounding the valley are rounded knolls of glacial material. 

 This is true, also, near Rossville and St. Mary's. They are the weathered remains of 

 kames or osars. In Washington county, there ars series of these hills, where the de- 

 composing granite falls to pieces with a touch. 



It has fallen to the writer's lot, within the last three years, to make several visits 

 to Iowa and the two Dakotas, spending, altogether, six or seven weeks in North Da- 

 kota alone. There the glacial phenomena are sharp, clear, and well defined. Lake 



