SAGINAW LOBE. 157 



of 50 feet in 5 or 6 miles. Bowlders are scattered over it for half a mile or more from the edge of 

 the moraine, but are rare farther out. The material is a coarse gravel and cobble next to the 

 moraine but becomes a finer gravel on passing out into the plain. 



Basins are deep and numerous next to the moraine, one of them being occupied by a lake 

 of perhaps 80 acres area. A mile or more from the moraine they are inconsiderable. 



Numerous lines of glacial drainage in northeastern Branch County head in the moraine 

 and lead down the Hog Creek valley across the southern edge of the gravel plain just discussed. 

 These channels were in operation apparently until the ice border had receded into western 

 Hillsdale County to the vicinity of Litchfield, for gravel plains west of Litchfield extend into 

 marshy channels that lead to Hog Creek near South Butler. There appears also to have been 

 northward drainage down Hog Creek from the vicinity of Quincy to these channels near South 

 Butler and thence westward along the creek to the Coldwater at Hodunk. The Coldwater 

 Valley not only served as a line of escape below Hodunk for glacial waters from the Hog Creek 

 channels and the broad gravel plain, but also for drainage from the region now tributary to it in 

 southeastern Branch Count}'. One channel passes west from Quincy; another follows down 

 the vallej 7 from a gravel plain that surrounds Coldwater Lake. 



