1882. me Deans. ING VERAGS See 
over, the valleys are cup-shaped, even the large river valley exhibiting 
this feature at a number of points cited by the writer. 
Nothing but glacial action is competent to explain the peculiar shape 
and positions of these hills and valleys ; and the glacier which deposited 
them must have moved in a general north and south direction, bearing, 
however, eastwardly to the east of Cayuga Lake, and westwardly 
west of Seneca Lake. The long axes of all the smaller lakes in this 
region prolonged, converge toward a point on the present Canadian 
shore of Ontario. This fact would seem to indicate conclusively that 
the glacier radiated in cutting through, or passing over, the mountain 
ridge, exerting, as has been said above, its maximum of force 
about Cayuga and Seneca lakes. The amount of erosion indicates 
that the glacier occupied this region for an immensely long period; and 
the writer thinks he 1s supported by the evidence in believing it one of 
the first to come and last to go of all the ice-streams which swept over 
New York State. The evidence is, moreover, conclusive that the di- 
rection of the glacial current in this locality was not south-westerly, as 
generally maintained by geologists. It may have been a mere deflec- 
tion of the great south-westerly current, but if so the deflection was 
permanent. Its great depth—about 2,000 feet from the bottom of 
Seneca Lake to the top of the highlands on either side, to say nothing 
of the mass upon their summits—must have greatly influenced its retro- 
grade movement ; and it is therefore possible that it may have blocked 
the entrance to the St. Lawrence and thus have held back the waters 
which formed’some of the ancient lake regions. The last of 
these ridges is 200 feet above the present level of the lake, and termi- 
nates in the vicinity of Great Sodus Bay. East of this point, the val- 
leys were too deep to admit of a continuous beach being formed ; hence 
all the higher hills were islands, and the waters circulated freely 
through the valleys, depositing brick-clays in many of them. [A line of 
elevations was given illustrating these points.] There are, however, 
no fossils in these clays, showing that the water was very cold and not 
far distant from ice—doubtless the foot of the retreating glacier. 
The writer quoted from Hitchcock (Pog. Sczence Monthly, Dec. 
1881,) and Newberry (Geological Survey of Ohio, Vol. II.) in reference 
to the motion of the ice, etc.,in the lake region; and from Geikie 
(“ The Great Ice Age”), in explanation of the causes operating to pro- 
duce the peculiar arrangement of the hills. The latter author describes 
such hills as occurring in broad valleys in Scotland, and believes that 
they are formed underneath the glaciers by alternations of lateral pres- 
sure. In the region under consideration there was a broad shallow 
valley, as shown by the depression in the Medina sandstone, and there 
must have been great and striking alternations of pressure, at least 
