YVINXEBAGO COUNTY. 85 



brought from long distances and deposited over large areas of the 

 county. The materials making up this loose mass were not derived, to 

 any great extent, from the underlying Trenton rocks, but came from 

 the inetamorpliic regions of the north. Whether brought by the cur- 

 rents and flow of the waters, or transported adhering to the sides of 

 those slow moving, pale green mountains, the ice-bergs ; or ground and 

 pushed and moved along by creeping, all-powerful glaciers, we shall 

 never perhaps positively know. All of these causes may have contribu- 

 ted to the.se results, but the appearance of the gravel beds themselves 

 indicate the long-continued action of water. This is nmch more evi- 

 dent in the "Winnebago than in the Stephenson county gravel beds. 

 The railroad track from Beloit to Caledonia, every few miles, cuts 

 through the top of long undulating swells of land. These swells are 

 pure, unmodified, unstratiiied drift. They are made up of assorted and 

 well rounded gravel of all sizes, from that of a pistol bullet to that of a 

 goose egg, intermingled with a white or yellowish-white sand, and occa- 

 sional small boulders, and are sometimes ten or fifteen feet in thickness. 

 All the railroads exhibit the same beds along their tracks, though in a 

 a less marked degree. Every township in the count}' has more or less 

 of these gravel beds, and their underlying associate deposits of clay 

 and sand. Along some of the prairies, and in the little streams, huge 

 boulders, the size of a haycock, are sometimes seen, partially sunk into 

 the soil by their great weight. Two of these particularly attracted our 

 attention. One was black as night, but bisected through the middle by 

 a flame of flesh-colored granite three-fourths of an inch in thickness. 

 "NYe once saw one precisely like it, and evidently from the same locality, 

 in Clark county, Missouri. The other was flame-colored and planed 

 smooth on two sides, nearly at right-angles, evidently by glacial action. 

 These lost or transported rocks, the story of whose journey from the 

 north is wrapped in so deep mystery clay and sand-banks, with faint 

 lines of stratification in some instances, assorted gravel beds, nuggets 

 and boulders of copper, rounded to smoothness by erosion of the waters ; 

 all tbese, left in their present positions, by the fingers of the retiring 

 seas, slightly modified, in some cases, by subsequent agencies make the 

 study of the drift in this county attractive, and are full of lessons of 

 thought to the contemplative mind. 



A more particular description of the materials in these and similar 

 gravel beds will be reserved until our report upon Ogle county is 

 written. 



