OUTER MORAINE OF THE MIAMI LOBE. 311 



Mill Creek Valley between Sharonville and Hartwell contains many 

 morainic swells, the highest of which stand probably 30 feet above the 

 general level of the valley, bnt the majority only 10 to 15 feet, perhaps 

 less. At Reading the drift surface consists of winding ridges of gravel, 

 20 feet or more high, but directly west, in Wyoming and Lockland, it 

 consists in the main of conical swells of till 10 to 30 feet high, but few of 

 which are abrupt or sufficiently prominent to be worthy of notice. Notwith- 

 standing their inconspicuousness when contrasted with the bluffs and hills 

 bordering Mill Creek Valley, these knolls constitute a marked feature when 

 Mill Creek Valley alone is taken into account. South of Hartwell and also 

 north of Sharonville the valley has a smooth plain from bluff to bluff, aside 

 from some low hills southeast of Glendale, which have a rock nucleus. 

 Much of it above Sharonville is a marshy tract so level that it has been 

 difficult to drain, and a portion of it has been converted into ice ponds. 

 South of Sharonville, where the moraine ajDpears, the valley bottom is 

 nndulatory, affording beautiful sites for the Cincinnati suburbs from Wyo- 

 ming to Hartwell. South of Hartwell the valley is again free from drift 

 knolls, and continues so to its iiaouth at Cincinnati. The knolls between 

 Hartwell and Sharonville, like those in Turtle Creek Valley, appear to be 

 in no way dependent upon the present drainage for their form, but, like 

 morainic swells on the uplands, they present a topography readily distin- 

 guishable from the drainage erosion type. 



The drift west of the Great Miami, between New Baltimore and Venice 

 (in the lowland tract mapped by Orton as an old valley),^ has a swell-and-sag 

 till topography. The undulations are slight, seldom reaching a height of 

 20 feet. The surface is bowlder strewn, and is not coated by a sheet of silt 

 such as occurs farther south and west. A short distance southwest of New 

 Haven (Preston post-office) the hills set in, and again it is difficult to dis- 

 tinguish a morainic belt, though knolls occur on the lowlands. It may be 

 remarked in passing that drift knolls are not often seen in the lowlands 

 south of this moraine, either in Ohio or in Indiana. South of Philanthropy, 

 near the State line of Ohio and Indiana and on the west side of Dry Fork, 

 is the most prominent drift aggregation in this part of the morainic belt. 

 It consists of a ridge of gravel, 500 yards or more in length and aboiit 200 

 yards in width, trending northeast to southwest and standing 30 to 50 feet 



' Geology of Ohio, Vol. 1, 1871, p. 419. Map of Hamilton County. 



