TWENTY-SEVENTH ANNUAL MEETING. 239 



in some of the valleys in the north part of the county. "West of Salt creek, 

 passing the Eight Mile House, going west, there is a fine succession of boulder 

 deposits. They are of all sizes up to more than a ton, and occur in the road 

 cuts below the tops of the hills on every successive ridge for four miles. They 

 are seen on every road south to beyond Doling, and constitute a fine example 

 of a glacial moraine. The mineral well on Little Stranger comes from below 

 a mass of this morainic material which has been made into a heavy conglom- 

 erate by ocherous cement. 



In places there is a tough, sticky, dark colored clay, with pebbles and small 

 boulders resting on bed rock, which is the product of the ice action in grinding 

 up the shales, sandstones and limestones over which it passed. It is called 

 hardpan or boulder clay. I have seen but little of this in Kansas, and usu- 

 ally the plainest drift products are the accumulations of boulders and pebbly 

 gravels. 



In the absence of hardpan, these rest on the bed rock of the district. For 

 long ages the Missouri river and its tributaries had been washing the surface 

 of the coal measures and had carried away in this region the last vestige 

 of any newer formations that might have been above them, and the valleys 

 nearly on the present lines were cut out. Then came the ice planing down 

 the surfaces, widening the valleys and narrowing the ridges. All river 

 courses were dammed, and the great streams of the Missouri, Platte and Kaw 

 were sent in new channels around the ice front or scattered in great lakes, 

 and in these lakes and streams ice floated from the edge of the glacier, both 

 at its greatest southern extent and when it was melting away and retreating 

 northward. These icebergs carried boulders and dropped them far away 

 in the deposits of sand and clay that settled from the cold waters. 



In Dakota, churches are built of some of these boulders. Most of them 

 here are the red, hard quartzites, which will take a beautiful polish. The 

 time will come when these troubles of the farmer will find a utility and a place 

 in ornamental building. 



In the region south of the limit of the ice the rivers and lakes were laying 

 down a yellowish deposit, very like the present mud of the Missouri river, and 

 as the ice melted this followed up the retreating glacier, and the yellow marl 

 lies over the deposits of boulders, which are exposed where modern erosion 

 has thinned out or entirely removed the marl, as in some of the localities 

 mentioned. 



Both boulders and marl are found on the highest land in this region, tes- 

 tifying to the mass of ice and the flow of water, whose action was probably 

 aided by some changes of level the extent of which we cannot at present even 

 guess in this region. Of the marl we shall now more particularly speak. 



THE YELLOW MARL-LOESS. 



Nearly everywhere in Leavenworth county this bed-rock shale, sand or 

 limestone is covered with a coating of yellow marl before referred to. It is 

 is shown in the bluffs of the Missouri river 30 feet high. Sometimes it is 

 only three to five feet thick, and caps bluffs of limestone or shale. It is in 

 places nearly 100 feet thick, and is so prevalent that bed rock is only seen in 

 the precipitous bluffs of the river, the higher ridges and ravines. The name 

 loess is from the German (loss), as a similar formation so named is found in 

 Rhineland. It is sometimes called the bluff formation because it is so con- 

 spicuous in the Missouri river bluffs from below Kansas City to Yankton. 



The name yellow marl describes its color and composition. It is a limy, 

 sandy clay with streaks of sand and gravel, and its color is a little brighter 



