PLATE XL. 



KANDIYOHI AND MEEKER COUNTIES, 1888. WARREN UPHAM. 



These counties afford no exposures of the underlying rocks, but from the boul- 

 ders which are abundant in the morainic portions, and from general inference from 

 the known trend of the formations of the state, it is supposed that the underlying 

 rocks are of the Archean. These counties lie between Stearns and Benton counties 

 on the northeast and the abundant Archean outcrops in the Minnesota valley at 

 Redwood Falls and Morton, while the Archean protaxis of the state runs through 

 both these extremes. It is hardly possible, therefore, that the Archean should be 

 wanting under Kandiyohi and Meeker counties. It is possible, however, that isolated 

 patches of the Cretaceous exist in different parts of these counties. Fragments of 

 lignite are sometimes found in the drift, and the soft and yet tenacious nature of 

 some of the till indicates that the Cretaceous element is not wanting in the drift, 

 and this Cretaceous element cannot have been far transported without loss of its 

 distinctive characters. It is likely, therefore, to have had a local origin. 



The glacial drift varies, as represented by the plate, from nearly flat to quite 

 rough. The retreat of the glacier margin across these counties was prolonged and 

 tumultuous. It probably involved several stationary epochs, and others of advance 

 and minor retreat prior to the final departure. Its final departure was also not 

 abrupt. During the formation of the moraine, which was due to a long lobe of ice 

 stretching from the northwest from the region of Winnipeg, the surface drainage 

 must have been copious, and its exit was toward the east, reaching the Mississippi 

 river. This was before lake Agassiz began its existence. The extensive gravel 

 deposits which characterize much of the moraine, no less than the condition and 

 forms in which it is now found, attest the thorough washing to which the drift, in 

 some paYts of these counties, was subjected. The extensive gravelly plains about 

 Litchfield, and in Burbank and Roseville, and the kames and irregular knolls wherever 

 found are composed of the coarser parts of the drift which were left after this wash- 

 ing. The streams that washed this gravel were the descendants of earlier streams 

 that had washed and distributed other gravel and formed terraces along the Missis- 

 sippi river. These later streams found their way across Stearns and Wright counties, 

 as evinced by old, terraced watercourses that still exist, which are comparable to 

 those of Dakota county. 



One large body of water appears to have left the ice-field in the north part of 

 New London, and to have passed northeastwardly to the Mississippi at St. Cloud. 

 Within the ice-field further west this water was gathered mainly by two branches, 



