140 Cincmnati Society of Nat jo a I History. 



growth, and there is no appearance of their ever having done so. 

 In one place where a lateral ravine comes into this wide one are 

 several granitic boulders, evident waifs from some far away 

 source, probably deposited by an ancient glacier which had here 

 stopped and melted. 



On the northwest side of Avondale is another deep ravine 

 still covered with the original forest, and deep down in its shady 

 recesses meanders a little brook which carries away the surplus 

 water to its final resting place, Mill Creek. This ravine, unlike 

 the first one, is still clothed with the primeval forest, and huge 

 giants some of the trees are. This is a favorite picnicing place, 

 and here too, children and their elders go in spring to gather 

 wild flowers. The Carthage Pike crosses this ravine near its lower 

 end, where it has lost all its forest beauty from having been used 

 for so many years as part of a dairy farm. 



The Rev. G. F. Wright, of Oberlin College, Ohio, after mak- 

 ing an exhaustive study of the glaciated surface in Pennsylvania, 

 Ohio and Indiana, found that the southern foot of the continental 

 glacier crossed the Ohio river somewhere near Point Pleasant, 

 about twenty-five miles above the city, and extended a short dis- 

 tance into Kentucky, recrossing the Ohio at Aurora, Indiana, an.d 

 thus blocked the course of the stream for about fifty miles.* 



In commenting upon this circumstance another writer. Prof. 

 I. C. White, estimates the height of this glacial dam at 645 feet 

 above low water in the Ohio river at Cincinnati.! Now the 

 highest land at present about our city is 460 feet above low water 

 mark. I have examined many places on the tops of the hills in 

 this city, and on none of them have I seen any traces of glacial 

 drift. The bedded rocks are close to the surface, and only have 

 on top of them such soil as would have been naturally formed by 

 the disintegration of the rocks themselves. That there is glacial 

 drift near the bases of the hills and in the valleys can not be denied, 

 for the evidence is everywhere abundant, but that it ever existed on 

 top of the highest ground about this city, I do not think can be 

 •proved. It therefore remains a question whether the icy barrier 

 could have reached any such height as six hundred and forty-five 

 feet above low water, and thus covered the highest ground with a 

 mass of debris of which no trace remains. 



♦Abstract in Pro. Am. Asso. Adv .Sci., vol. XXXII., p. 207.— Sec also Ohio Geol. 

 Vol. v., p. 7^0, it sn/. 

 +Ibi'l, p. 213. 



