494 GLACIAL FORMATIONS OF ERIE AND OHIO BASINS. 



White River to the main morainic system. The part of White River Valley 

 crossed by this chamiel is very marshy. The excavation of this channel 

 apparently began while the ice sheet still covered much of the White River 

 drainage basin. Channels such as these promise important results when 

 carefully studied. 



MISSISSINAWA MORAINE. 

 DISTRIBUTION. 



Under this name is described a morainic belt in part single and in part 

 double, which throughout much of its course lies just north of the Missis- 

 sinawa River, and which may therefore with propriety be named the Mis- 

 sissinawa moraine. After following the river from its source in Darke 

 County, Ohio, westward to Wabash County, Ind., the moraine leaves the 

 river and swings northward through the eastern tier of townships of the 

 latter county, coming to the Wabash River at Lagro and to Eel River 

 between South Whitley and Columbia City. In eastern Jay County the 

 moraine consists of a single great ridge about 6 miles in width, but in west- 

 ern Jay County, and for about 20 miles west to the vicinity of Hartford 

 City, it consists of a narrow outer ridge 1 to 2 miles wide, which follows 

 the Mississinawa River quite closely, and a broader inner one 3 to 5 miles 

 in width, the plane tract between them being 1 to 4 miles in width. North- 

 west from Hartford the two belts are united, and the moraine has a breadth 

 of 5 or 6 miles. 



The distribution of this moraine northward from Eel River is some- 

 what difficult to determine, inasmuch as it is for some distance associated 

 with Saginaw moraines, the whole series constituting a part of the inter- 

 lobate inoraine between the Saginaw and Maumee lobes, whose course 

 Chamberlin outlined some years ago.^ Dryer considers a very rugged por- 

 tion of the moraine, lying just east of the crest or in places constituting 

 the crest in Whitley, Noble, Dekalb, and Steuben counties, Ind., to be the 

 continuation of the Mississinawa moraine.^ 



The fact that the later moraines of the Maumee-Miami lobe are plainly 

 traceable through the districts to the east of the interlobate moraine, and 

 that the oldest of these later moraines (the Salamonie) in places touches the 



'Third Ann. Kept. U. S. Geol. Survey, 1883, p. 330, and Pis. XXVIII and XXXI. 

 ^Geology of Whitley and of Steuben counties, Ind., by Charles R. Dryer: Seventeenth Ann. Bept. 

 Geol. Survey Indiana, 1889. 



