GEOLOGICAL CHANGES IN MICHIGAN. 827 



portance merits, and have been overlooked altogether by some geolog- 

 ical writers, whose observations might be expected to cover their 

 field. Let us take a look at this region and examine briefly some of 

 the marks in which Nature has written its history. We find it in 

 the main a sandy plain, wooded with white-oak, beech, maple, hem- 

 lock, and pine, varying in the proportion which they bear to one 

 another, and interspersed with other trees and undergrowth in all the 

 variety which the prolific flora of that region affords. In places the 

 land sinks so low as to constitute a timbered swamp, and in others 

 it rises to a moderate height above ground-water ; often it appears, as 

 indicated by the vegetation it bears, to be very fertile, but occasion- 

 ally it is almost naked in its barrenness. Taken as a whole, it is of a 

 lower degree of fertility than the heavier soils found in the more cen- 

 tral and southern parts of the State, and for this reason it is less gen- 

 erally under cultivation than it otherwise would be. 



This plain is, however, interspersed with tracts of land of a very 

 different character. These consist mostly of a clayey loam, contain- 

 ing bowlders, as the sandy levels generally do not, having a more roll- 

 ing and irregular surface, and, so far as it has been the writer's privi- 

 lege to observe them, lying at a higher level than the sandy plain by 

 which they are surrounded. 



On scanning the map of Michigan, it will strike one as a peculiar 

 feature of this west side of the State, that nearly every stream, large 

 or small, that flows into Lake Michigan, expands into a small lake near 

 its mouth, a fact that may have given rise to a query in some as to 

 why such a peculiar feature should exist, especially in a country all of 

 whose features are post-glacial — carved, indeed, out of the glacial drift 

 or built upon it everywhere ; and it is with the hope to throw some 

 light on this matter, as well as other peculiarities of the region, that 

 this article is written. 



Our principal field of observation is the country near Whitehall, 

 Muskegon County, Michigan, where the writer began to reside in the 

 summer of 1878. This village is situated at the head of White Lake, 

 on White River, which opens into Lake Michigan some six miles to the 

 southwest. 



In this river-lake one may see in many places an old water-line on 

 piling, which at that time was at an elevation of three feet or more 

 above the water. The fact that this line was continuous at a uniform 

 level on lines of piling that were apparently undisturbed rendered the 

 theory of uplifting by ice that was often given in explanation of it 

 exceedingly unsatisfactory ; and when old residents of the neighbor- 

 hood were heard to speak, as they often did, of schooners loading and 

 unloading, a few years before, in places where there was not at this 

 time water enough to float a raft, it left very little room for doubt that 

 this old water-line recorded a real change of relative level between the 

 water and the land. 



