JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 63 
afield to-day, although this morning there was about an inch of snow- 
fall which has nearly melted away, and batrachians have been 
hopping about among the fallen leaves in the woods and marshes 
within a day or two of late. We have only the regular winter bird 
residents to visit our shrubberies now, and the almost universal 
practice about here now is to cut up the corn fodder and pack the 
same in silos just as soon as ripe in early September, so the fields 
are clear of corn stooks, and in consequence few or no crows are 
seen or heard during the fall or winter season. Blue jays also keep 
more to the woods for acorns, etc., but frequent orchards too to re- 
gale on frozen and neglected specimens of apples and other fruit. 
The long continued dry weather of the summer of 1899 has 
caused a great number of wells to fail to yield their normal supply 
so that the digging of new wells or else deepening the old ones has 
been in many instances resorted to in this district, and a more ex- 
tended knowledge of the earth’s surface-strata has been thus acquired. 
In these parts most commonly there are 4 to 6 feet of alluvium to 
be dug through ere the indurated or glacial clay layers are arrived 
at. These compressed and hardened deposits are found to extend 
to varying depths of from 20 to 40 feet or more, and to penetrate 
them, well sharpened mattocks or steel-pointed crowbars are a ne- 
cessity, and the labor is sometimes nearly as severe as if logs of solid 
wood had to be pierced through. There are also numerous boulders 
of various species of rocks imbedded in the grayish or bluish clay 
beds, and occasional veins of thin layers of rather fine gravel are 
found at varying depths ; and these, at a depth of 20 feet or more, 
usually yield a more or less copious supply of pure water, but gener- 
ally the most abundant and permanent water supply is met with 
when strata of quicksand of greater thickness than the above men- 
tioned are met with. 
Gravel veins or streaks are met with. Violent currents or 
“watery tides must have existed here at the time of deposition of 
these superficial strata, as is evident in some spots from the contorted 
and undulated, and sometimes variously inclined or inverted position 
of the earthy masses. Judging from the varying depths at which the 
loose sand strata or percolating gravel veins are met with there would 
seem to occur a sort of ‘‘ pockets” that have been filled in with the 
indurated clay or marl, and when such sites happen to be struck by 
