A CENTURY OF GEOLOGY IN INDIANA. 139 



In the long and detailed report on Montgomery County, CoUett has ten 

 or twelve pages devoted to the ''Glacial Epoch," in which he gives an in- 

 teresting account of the changes wrought in that region by the moving and 

 melting ice. He states that "East of Sugar Creek and south of Crawfords- 

 ville was an extensive body of water, covering nearly 100 square miles, the 

 silt and shore line of which is so plainly lacustral and marked that its existence 

 could not have terminated more than a few thousand years ago. The phenom- 

 ena of this basin have long been noticed and studied by Col. James H. Harney, 

 in whose honor as the discoverer I have given it the name of Ancient Lake 

 Harney." 



He includes a "List of 110 Species of Fossils found in the Keokuk 

 (Harrodsburgh) Group at Crawfordsville," most of which are crinoids from the 

 famous beds near that city. Of the area now known as the "Shades of Death" 

 he says: "Little Ranty, flowing from the south, approaches in a flume-like 

 passway cut 50 feet deep in heavy sandstone, and thence rushes in a filmy 

 sheet 45 feet down an almost perpendicular bank of dark shale, like an endless 

 ribbon with warp of silver and woof of sparkling crystals. The cascade is 

 nestled away in an amphitbeafer, 200 feet in diameter, crowded with shrubs, 

 ferns and tenderest Avild plants, here untrodden and xmseen. Traveling 

 ferns creep over and cling to the ragged masses of tufa, which guard the 

 narrow entrance from the eye of the careless observer. More than 100 feet 

 above, tall oaks and pines, encircling the rim, SA\dng their branches together 

 across the cove and chasm. At the 'rookery' all the buzzards living within 

 ten or fifteen miles, meet each summer evening for information, converse and 

 mutual assistance." 



Following Collett's papers in the Seventh Report there is one of 35 pages 

 by G. M. Levette, entitled "Observations on the Depth and Temperature of 

 some of the Lakes of Northern Indiana." In gathering data for this paper 

 Levette had been accompanied bj' Caleb Cooke, one of the Curators of 

 Peabody Museum at Salem, Massachusetts. Together they dredged and 

 sounded 15 lakes in Fulton, LaPorte, Kosciusko, Noble, LaGrange and 

 Steuben Counties. Of the origin and future of these lakes Levette said: 

 "They are without exception mere basins or depressions in the glacial clay. 

 No stratified rocks have been found io the bottom or on the shores in a single 

 instance, but, on the contrary, the numerous deep bores which have been 

 made in that region, from time to time, prove that from 80 to 200 feet of 

 glacial drift overlies the stratified rocks throughout the entii'e lake region of 

 northern Indiana." 



"Wet boggy marshes and small lakes which have become dry and arable 

 within tho memory of white men; extensive deposits of peat, from five to 50 

 feet in depth; blind lakes or bodies of water which are covered with a few 

 feet of peaty soil, some of which sustain a growth of forest trees; the annually 

 receding shores of many of the smaller lakes, and the perceptible yearly 

 aeeumi.latiou of 'marl or fresh water lime in the shallow portions of many 

 of them, all lead to the inference that at no very distant period in the past. 



