GLACIAL LAKE MAUMEE. 339 



These spurs have four marked peculiarities: (1) Their southwest ends all hend sharply 

 south, leaving the direct lines of continuation unoccupied; (2) most of them show angular crooks 

 and turns that are plainly not normal to the conditions of beach formation in this district; (3) 

 they divert the course of the streams toward the northeast, which is contrary to the direction 

 that would be expected if they are true beach bars built by waves; (4) though their composition 

 varies considerably they contain much clay, in many places more than 50 per cent. 



The southwest direction in which the spur ridges split off is such that they could have been 

 built as spits or bars only by shore drift coming from the northeast. If so built they must have 

 been made before the building of the Defiance moraine, for since that moraine was built the 

 dominant wave action and shore currents were from the west and southwest, and the wave action 

 and shore currents from the northeast were relatively weak because of the narrow expanse of 

 water in that direction. Their relations, however, are such that they could not have been built 

 from that direction. 



One of the most striking peculiarities, of the spur ridges is the bent end which characterizes 

 each. Six or seven such ends occur between Gomer and Columbus Grove and several other less 

 prominent ones farther east. Their relations to the streams and their horizontal plan are shown 

 on Plate XV. 



One of the spur ridges which terminates a mile east of Vaughnsville is about 2\ miles long. 

 Most of it is straight and simple in form, its chief peculiarity being its bent end and the relation 

 of this to Sugar Creek. In shape it resembles a hockey stick, the sharply bent end at the south- 

 west corresponding to the bent end of the stick. It looks as though the ridge had originally 

 extended in a straight line southwest to the creek and had there been united directly with the 

 ridge on the west side, the end of which, now one-third mile away, is not bent. The ridge does 

 not come up to the bank of the creek on the east side nor does the opening contain deposits rep- 

 resenting the ridge. If any were ever there they must have been removed. The bent end is of 

 the proper length to supply the missing part, and the effect is as though the end east of the creek 

 had been pressed or pushed back a quarter of a mile or more by some agency acting from the 

 west or northwest. 



The bent end looks like an inward curving spit or hook on the map, but it is in reality not 

 of that nature. The environment is not that which favors the making of hooked spits but is 

 typical of that which leads to the making of straight-line or very gently curved beach forms. 

 The ground on which the ridge rests is extremely flat. The stream even now is only slightly 

 depressed where it passes through the ridge, and at the time Lake Maumee existed the depres- 

 sion was certainly much less. No wide, shallow troughs are associated with these streams, 

 as is plainly shown by the contours of the topographic maps and by the remarkably even, nearly 

 straight course of the middle Maumee beach ridge westward from Columbus Grove. This beach 

 shows that at the time of its formation there was no inequality of the land surface of sufficient 

 magnitude to counteract the normal tendency to the formation of rectilinear shore lines. Con- 

 ditions were similar during the formation of the highest beach and of the spurs with bent ends. 



There appears to have been no reason for the formation of hooked spits at the places where 

 the bent ends are found. There was no depression or valley toward the south up which they 

 could turn. Indeed, these bent ends usually run up onto ground somewhat higher than that 

 where the spurs split from the mam ridge. Two miles south of Columbus Grove and in one or 

 two other places the bent end is wider and higher than the rest of the spur, as though the material 

 of a section of the spur had been pushed obliquely into a smaller space. 



Most of the spur ridges show peculiar crooks or sharp bends that resemble the angles of the 

 bent ends, but in which there is no break. Good examples are shown south and southeast of 

 Vaughnsville and south and east of Columbus Grove. This peculiarity is just as abnormal as 

 the bent ends for true beach formations under the simple conditions of this district. 



In another way these forms are decidedly abnormal. In the making of beach ridges on 

 shores conditioned like this, the gravel and sand for the building of the ridges is not derived from 

 the cutting of sea cliffs nor in any important degree from sediments brought in by small streams 

 like those of this district but is gathered mainly from the bottom of the lake in the shallow 



