374 NATURAL HISTORY BULLETIN. 



facts mentioned in Miss Owen's paper concerning the com- 

 position and stratification to which Professor Winchell has 

 called attention." The "numerous facts" referred to are practi- 

 cally embodied in the statement that at a number of points 

 lamination and stratification appear in the loess, and it is as- 

 sumed that this proves water-deposition. This is submitted 

 as one of the most important "evidences" contained in the 

 papers under discussion,* but it is neither new nor unusual, for 

 the writer can point out a large number of exposures in which 

 lamination may be observed. But he desires here to protest 

 against the further perpetuation of the error that lamination 

 or stratification are in themselves proof of water-deposition. 

 While water deposits are often laminated, not all laminated 

 deposits were formed in water. The writer has already called 

 attention to this fact as illustrated in the road-cut near the 

 Bohemian cemetery in West Cedar Rapids, t where distinctly 

 laminated sand was found covering a fence. This cut is about 

 ioo feet above the river, and there can be no question that 

 the deposit was formed by winds. The "White Sands," an 

 extensive gypsum sand-dune formation west of Alamogordo, 

 X. Mex., often clearly show lamination, yet there is no question 

 that these dunes were formed by winds, as ranches have been 

 overwhelmed by them within the memory of old settlers. 

 West of Missouri Valley, Iowa, there is an extensive sand- 

 dune area along the Missouri river. The writer has made 

 sections of some of the dunes, and invariably found them 

 laminated and sometimes stratified, more or less parallel to the 

 surface. Yet they are undoubtedly seolian. One of the largest 

 of these (see PI. XIV, fig. 2) rises more than 40 feet above the 

 Missouri, and the testimony of old settlers shows that it has 

 been formed since the year 1883, and that the waters of the 

 Missouri have never covered it, even during the flood of 1903. 

 Yet even its uppermost portions distinctly show lamination, 

 especially if moist lumps of the cohering sand be broken (not 

 cut) vertically. 



* It is also emphasized by Professor Broadhead in Am. Geol. , vol. 

 sxxiii, p. 39. 



tProc. la. Acad. Sci. , vol. iv, p. 70, footnote. 



