GLACIAL GE( )L( )( rY W( )RK OF PROF. N. H. WINCHELL 



By Professor F. W. Sardeson 



University of Minnesota 



The work of N. H. Winchell on various phases of Glacial 

 Geology is well represented in his Final Reports of the Geological 

 and Natural History Survey of Minnesota. Nearly all of it had 

 been published earlier in Annual Reports and in journals, but 

 the matter is assembled in better form in the Final Reports of 

 the Survey. 



A very large part of the state of Minnesota is covered by 

 deposits that come directly or indirectly from the melting ice- 

 lobes, of the great continental glaciers of Pleistocene time, and 

 the state geologist had many an occasion for noting and describ- 

 ing this so-called drift. He might have written much more about 

 it than he did if there had not been so much other geology in 

 the State that demanded his time and attention. He wrote 

 enough, however, to show what would have been the result had 

 his time and attention been directed wholly toward glacial geol- 

 ogy. Winchell noted the fundamental relations of the glacial 

 drift very clearly, and made rapid progress, for several years, 

 toward what is now our most advanced knowledge of the drift. 



The distinctions between older and younger drift sheets, as 

 described by Winchell in chapters on county geology, are very 

 noteworthy in showing the extent and quality of his work. In 

 the chapter on Fillmore county (p. 313, Vol. 1, Final Rep., 1884), 

 he says of the drift on the east side of the county :* "These 

 patches of northern drift present the appearance of greater age 

 than the drift of the western portion of the county, and are be- 

 lieved to belong to a glacial epoch that preceded the great drift 

 sheet of the northwest. An inter-glacial epoch separated them." 

 Further, "It is the older drift that is covered deeply by the loess 

 loam . . . ." He described also beds of peat in Fillmore 

 and Mower counties (loc. cit. p. 363), lying between the two drift 

 sheets there, as conclusive evidence of an "inter-glacial epoch." 

 The full meaning of these quotations from Winchell become more 



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