PLATE LTX. 



HOBBARD COUNTY AND NORTHWESTERN PORTION OF CASS, 1899. J. E. TODD. 



This area has no exposures of the bedrock, so far as known. A morainic belt 

 crosses it from east to west, connecting toward the east with the moraine that lies 

 south of Leech lake, called Itasca moraine by Mr. Upham. Another belt of morainic 

 land runs apparently across the last in a north and south direction, and because of its 

 association with the Schoolcraft (or Yellow Head) river in the north has been named 

 by Mr. Todd the Schoolcraft River moraine. This passes east of Park Eapids and 

 west of the head of Schoolcraft river, leaving the county in the vicinity of lakes 

 Alice and Hattie, turning east and passing between lakes Bemidji and Turtle north 

 of the bend of the Mississippi. A third moraine, called Cass Lake moraine by Mr. 

 Todd, passes by the west end of lake Kabekona northward, turns east, and is crossed 

 by the Mississippi at the Metoswa rapids, extending thence east and northeast. Mr. 

 Todd suggests that the Itasca moraine, at Itasca lake, is of the nature of an inter- 

 lobate moraine, with its apex eastward. 



The till is uniformly of a gray color and constitutes the principal body of the 

 glacial drift of the region. It is nearly free from limestone pieces. It hence seems 

 not to have been derived in general from the northwest. About Fish Hook lake, 

 however, in the southwest part of Hubbard county, limestone pieces are common. 

 These are not like the hard and tough limestone seen along the Minnesota valley, but 

 soft and impure, of a yellowish color, and may have been derived from some of the 

 Lower Magnesian strata of the Upper Cambrian which possibly underlies the region. 

 This is a distinction made by Prof. Todd. 



Prof. Todd's hypothesis of the relations of the glacial moraines is one that 

 seems to be in harmony with numerous facts, discovered in the northeastern part 

 of the state since the correlation of the drift features proposed by Mr. Upham was 

 published, going to show that a lobe of the continental ice-sheet was prolonged in 

 time and in force after the ice had retreated from the western part of the state, and 

 probably after the northwestern part of the state was freed from ice; and that hence 

 some of the moraines that have been traced out in a general way about the western 

 confines of the Lake Superior basin are due to that lobe rather than to the main 

 continental glacier. The curving of the moraines northeastwardly from the region 

 of Itasca lake, as represented by Prof. Todd, may be due to the existence of the Lake 

 Superior ice-lobe over the region of the upper Mississippi. On the partial with- 

 drawal southeastwardly of the northwestern border of that lobe, such lobe was 

 probably still projected over the Mississippi valley as far north as to Pokegama falls, 



