198 Onto STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
In January, 1901, I began making holes through the ice and 
testing the bottom by means of an auger welded to an iron rod 
along which would slide an arm provided with a set-screw, 
making it convenient to push, turn or lift the auger at any depth 
the rod would reach. The water of the bay is mostly less than 
12 feet deep. The rod used the first winter was 18 feet long. 
Where the mud was very deep extensions were put on. The 
original rod was lost with the point about 30 feet in the mud and 
3914 feet below the surface of the ice near the old range lights 
an of Johnson’s Island. Later I used a rod 20 feet long with 
an extension piece 12 feet long. 
The bottom of the bay is nearly level so that soundings giving 
the depth of the water do not disclose any valleys (Map IX). By 
testing the bottom at numerous points along lines transverse to the 
general course of the stream it was found “that off the mouth of 
each stream was soft mud containing organic matter and readily 
distinguished from the glacial drift on either side. “It had been 
thought the glacial clay might be softened by being covered by 
water so long, but experience showed that as a rule the weight 
of two men would push the auger but a few inches or a foot or 
two into this clay, whereas it might be pushed twenty feet or 
more into the deposits made since the glacier. The agitation of 
the water by waves has caused the loose mud to fill the original 
valleys, making the bottom of the bay approximately level. 
These valleys made by the streams, when they flowed miles 
farther than now to reach lake level are thus traceable by the 
lines of soft mud. 
On the maps showing the location of borings it is not a fault 
of the draftsman that the lines are not parallel and do not inter- 
sect others exactly at right angles. On these maps I have 
attempted to give the location of the borings as actually made, 
though it may have been the intention to make them along 
north and south or east and west lines. The difficulties in 
always carrying out such intentions were several; unreliability 
of a compass in determining the directions accurately ; mist 
obscuring landmarks I had intended to use; errors in maps and 
charts. In some of the earlier work the drawbridge across the 
bay in the L. S. & M. S. bridge was used as a landmark. After 
a time it was discovered that more than ten years before the 
drawbridge had been changed to a position nearly 1000 feet 
farther southeast but that the charts of Sandusky Bay with 
corrections to date still represented it in the old position. The 
platting of work done east of the mouth of Pipe Creek and in the 
marshes beyond was especially difficult because the border of 
the marsh is so indefinite and there was nothing in the vicinity 
