GEACIALE GROOVES AND ysSlRIAE IN SOUTHEAST - 
ERN NEBRASKA’ 
NEBRASKA is so close upon the western as well as the south- 
ern limit of the drift that evidences of glacial action which 
might be commonplace elsewhere are rare and interesting here. 
The mere fact that glacial grooves and striae have been found 
seems worthy therefore of mention. Glacial drift, readily rec- 
ognizable as such, does not extend far west of the 97th merid- 
ian, and in but one place in the state, on the Dakota-Nebraska 
boundary, does it reach the g8th meridian. East of the 97th 
meridian it is distinct and unmistakable, and it may be offered 
as a safe statement that probably in no other state is the glacial 
drift so generally recognized as such by the mass of the people. 
This is due to the presence of numerous bright red and purple 
bowlders of Sioux quartzite. They are unmistakable, and it is 
generally known that they have been transported from the 
region of Sioux Falls in South Dakota, and scattered along the 
eastern border of Nebraska, and south into Kansas. Bowlders of 
Sioux quartzite twenty feet in diameter are to be found as far 
south as the Nebraska-Kansas line. A heavy mantel of drift, 
overlaid by a hundred feet or so of loess, so effectually con- 
ceals the rocks that exposures are rare, and striations and simi- 
lar evidence of glacial action, which may be common enough in 
fact, are not seen. The first were found by the author in 1894 
on a slab of Carboniferous limestone in the old Reed quarry one 
mile northeast of Weeping Water. 
Though not found exactly in place it was unmistakably 
native rock. The ledge from which it came has just been found 
by Mr. E. G. Woodruff (Univ. Nebr. 1900). It is a narrow 
ledge perhaps 300 feet long by five to six feet wide, leveled, 
smoothed, and striated throughout. The grooves and striae run 
south eleven degrees east. One groove, the most conspicuous 
tPaper read before the Nebraska Academy of Science, December 2, 1899. 
309 
