518 GLACIAL FORMATIONS OF ERIE AND OHIO BASINS. 



with the center, there being a double arch exposed in the lower beds upon 

 which the upper beds rest unconformably. The greater part of the expo- 

 sure, including all the arching beds, consists of fine gravel with much 

 sand intermixed, but the highest part of the pit is a coarse gravel or 

 cobble, dipping down funnel shaped into the hill to a distance of several 

 feet, its point resting between the arches of the underlying beds of gravel 

 noted above. At the side of this funnel there is an abrupt change to sand 

 in horizontal beds. Such peculiar arrangements of beds as these glacial 

 deposits present, both here and elsewhere, can scarcely be given a full 

 interpretation in the present stage of investigation. They were probably 

 deposited beneath the confining walls of a tunnel or cavity beneath the ice 

 sheet, whose form was changing with the movement of the ice sheet. It is 

 scarcely probable that free-moving waters in an open channel could pro- 

 duce wide and sharp variations in structure and dip, such as are here 

 displayed. 



Many of the wells in northwestern Jay and southern Wells counties 

 have slight exposures of gravel. The gravel seldom constitutes the whole 

 of a knoll, but is confined to one side, or forms a cone-shaped mass in its 

 central poi'tion with till around the borders. It was estimated that at least 

 one-half the knolls in this portion of the moraine contain more or less gravel- 



From New Lancaster to the mouth of the Salamonie there is much 

 gravel in the immediate bluffs of the river, and the same is true of the bluffs 

 of the Wabash River at and below Huntington. In places the bluffs have 

 a thin capping of till, while the remainder of the di'ift consists of gravel and 

 sand, there being the appearance of a fresh advance and a deposit of glacial 

 material upon an old gravel plain. The gravel may occupy the divide in 

 western Huntington County between these streams, but data from wells 

 indicate that, if so, it is covered by a heavier deposit of till than that along 

 the brow of the bluffs. 



Along the Salamonie moraine and the plain north of it in Auglaize and 

 Mercer counties, Ohio, wells indicate the presence of a deep channel which, 

 as above noted, has been made a subject of special investigation by 

 Bownocker. The channel is found to lead from Anna, in Shelby County, 

 northwestward across the Salamonie moraine into the Grand Reservoir, 

 where it was joined by a channel from the south which has been traced 

 as far as Xenia. Bownocker traced the united channel northward from 



