Il6 JOHN LYON RICH 



Chamberlin^ suggests that, in the Catskills, some of the minor 

 moraines scattered through the mountain valleys may be due to inde- 

 pendent local glaciers. Of this region Smock^ writes: 



The valleys are essentially of erosive origin, obscured, however, now by 

 glacial debris in many places. In some of them, as that of the Batavia Kill at 

 Windham, the Stony Clove, and Woodland valley, there are very plainly marked 

 moraines indicating the existence and retreat of local glaciers. The larger valleys 

 of the Schoharie Kill, the East branch of the Delaware, and the Esopus Creek, 

 also have their moraines, though not so well defined. Subsequent to the retreat 

 of the great mass of the continental glacier these valleys were no doubt occupied 

 by detached glaciers. 



The above summary shows that the former existence of local gla- 

 ciers in the mountains of New England and New York has been recog- 

 nized, in some places as certain, in others as very probable. It is the 

 purpose of this paper to describe a definite instance of local glaciation 

 in the Catskills. 



Location and topography. — The region covered by this paper lies 

 in the northern part of the Catskills, roughly speaking at the junction 

 of Schoharie, Greene, and Delaware Counties, and includes a part of 

 each.3 The Schoharie Creek, flowing northward, is the principal 

 stream. It occupies a rather narrow, deep valley whose floor at Gilboa 

 has an elevation of i,ooo feet, and at Prattsville, four miles south, i,ioo 

 feet. South of Prattsville the mountains rise directly up from the 

 valley to elevations varying from 3,000 to 4,000 feet, while north of 

 that village is a dissected plateau with a general elevation of about 

 2,000 feet. All the mountains south of Prattsville, and the higher 

 portions of the plateau to the north, are made up of Oneonta- Cats- 

 kill red and gray sandstones and red shales, which give to the soil a 

 very characteristic red color, easily distinguished from the bluish or 

 yellow color of the northern drift. 



About three miles west of Prattsville, at the head of Fly Brook, a 

 tributary to the Schoharie is a large U-shaped amphitheater in the moun- 

 tains, with the open side toward the northeast, and with a breadth of 

 about two miles from crest to crest of its inclosing rim. On the south 

 and southwest portions of the rim are the two highest peaks — Round- 



^ U. S. Geological Survey, Third Annual Report, p. 373. 



'American Journal of Science, Series 3, Vol. XXV (1883), pp. 346-50. 



3 Gilboa sheet, U. S. Geological Survey. 



