136 PROCEEDINGS OF THE INDIANA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



to 125 feet. Around their sides the ice water has deposited slight terraces 

 containing minute pebbles and some imported material, as if to record the 

 highest flood upon this meter of the great glacial river; while white and bare, 

 these storm scarred summits looked out over the \\anter wild, and saw that 

 rigid river of ice menace their base, or turn to right and left into the two 

 White River Valleys, and float by in a stream of ghostly silver. Remarkable 

 as witnesses of the early Quaternar3% their elevation above the ocean reaches 

 back beyond the time which saw the Carboniferous, Mesozoic and Tertiary 

 seas to the west, bury their treasm-es of warmth and wondrous animal life 

 as they shrunk from existence." And on a later page he adds: "The summit 

 of Weed Patch Hill has not been under water since it emerged from the 

 subcarboniferous ocean, and, from all the evidence seen, it was an unconcerned 

 spectator of the grand phenomenon which signalized the glacial age. It 

 takes its name from the fact that just before it was first visited by the early 

 pioneer, a tornado had scalped some 100 acres of the tip-top plateau, prostrat- 

 ing a magnificent forest of large poplar, oak, walnut and cherry trees. Weeds 

 and grass succeeded in luxuriant growth, which, together with the trunks 

 and branches of the fallen trees, were burned by each summer's fire, and 

 commenced a miniature prairie; weeds and vines became the prevailing 

 vegetable growth, and hence the name." 



In his report on Scott County, Borden states that "Resting on the New 

 Albany black shale are found large fossil tr(>es. Some of these specimens are 

 of great siz >; all are si'icified and so hard that a fragment with a sharp edge 

 will scratch glass. One which was exhumed and exhil)ited at the Indianapolis 

 Exposition of 1S7.'^, measured over 16 feet in length and two feet in diameter, 

 and had a jointed structure, which is a characteristic feature of all these fossil 

 trees. Another measuring 19 feet in length and three feet in the broadest 

 part, being somewhat flattened, was taken from the black shale, a short 

 distance northeast of Vienna, and exhibited at the Indianapolis Exposition 

 for 1874." He concludes his report with a list of fossils taken from the Black 

 Shale, and also a list of those found in the Lower and Upper Silurian rocks of 

 Jefferson County by Dr. W. J. S. Cornett of Madison. 



Following the report of Borden are the first two j)apers ever i)ublished 

 on the fishes of Indiana. They are also among the first, if not the first, ever 

 written by their author, the world-renowned Ichthj^ologist, David Stan- 

 Jordan. One is entitled "The Sisco of Lake Tippecanoe and its Relatives." 

 The Sisco, he states, are fishes belonging to the Salmonidae or trout family, 

 a group distinguished at "once among our fresh water fishes by the presence 

 of the so-called 'adipose' fin, behind the dorsal fin, in connection with a 

 scaly body and naked head with no barbels about the mouth." Those found 

 in the northern Indiana lakes inliabit the deepest water except in the spawn- 

 ing season late in autumn, when, says Jordan, "they come in myriads into 

 the streams which enter the lakes. There are large numbers of persons who 

 are engaged night and day taking them with small dip nets. Those who live 

 in the neighborhood put up large quantities of them, they being the only 



