HUMAN RELICS OF LANSING, KANSAS 773 



the building up of a normal upper flood plain that much above 

 the preceding erosion plain may be assumed. This must have 

 been accompanied by a filling up of the lower part of the tribu- 

 tary in like measure. More than this, if the diverted stream in 

 its new course ran on the opposite side of the bottoms, two 

 miles away, the tributary might have also built a fan on the 

 surface of the flood plain, with proportional further aggra- 

 dation within its mouth. Now this filling up of the axis of 

 the valley to the amount indicated, changed the condition of 

 the lower sides of the valley, and these became covered with 

 lodgment deposits derived from the upper slopes and with silts 

 blown up from the Missouri bottoms, an action still in effective 

 operation. Such deposits are the normal result of an effort to 

 establish a new set of gradients adjusted to a lifted axis. The 

 deposit resulting from these combined agencies should be just 

 such a mixed nondescript one as the actual case presents, viz., 

 a little clear stratification in the lower part, some suggestion of 

 stratification of an uncertain sort in the other portions, but no 

 complete stratification or assortment ; a general absence of 

 declared structure, some limestone debris, some shale debris, a 

 little drift, some loess wash, some soil wash, with land shells, 

 some stream or back-water silt, with river shells — perhaps 

 humanly introduced — and some wind silt; and hence, some 

 portions unleached and others leached, with other variations 

 from a typical unitarian deposit, such as true alluvium on the 

 one hand, or typical loess on the other. It seems to me that 

 the depth of the deposit is quite within the competency of this 

 method, while its general configuration and aspect are in close 

 accord with this interpretation. Under this view the burial of 

 the human remains took place either during the latest phases 

 the erosive process of the stage indicated, or in the early 

 phase of the building of the flood plain. The antiquity of the 

 burial is measured bv the time occupied by the Missouri river in 

 lowering its bottoms, two miles more or less in width, somewhere 

 from fifteen to twenty-five feet, a very respectable antiquity, 

 but much short of the close of the glacial invasion. 



2. Possible but not probable i?iterpretatio?is . — As previously 



