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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVIII. No. 723 



so great in the lower Salt River and San T 

 Sidro-Zia regions. New Mexico, that the 

 cactus and yucca plants are half submerged 

 by it. In the vicinity of the Indian village of 

 Santa Anna, lower down in the same valley, 

 the wind-blown sand has in recent years com- 

 pletely covered the farm lands of the tribe, so 

 that the government was finally compelled to 

 give them another reservation across the Rio 

 Grande at Bernalillo. 



5. At the Indian village of San Felipe in 

 the valley of the Eio Grande, the settling of 

 dust particles blown from the almost barren 

 mesa adjacent is very noticeable. 



6. Around the White Thunder camp of the 

 Rosebud Indian Reservation, in the valley of 

 White Thunder Creek, S. D., the soil is a 

 clay; yet the sands from the Arikaree strata 

 some six miles away are blown by every wind 

 storm completely across the valley and even 

 into the houses, so that after every heavy 

 wind one can write in the sand on the window 

 sills inside the houses. 



7. Last year I laid down a board in some 

 grass on the lee side of Pacific street ridge in 

 the village of LaPush, Wash., near the beach 

 of Quillayute Bay. Several months later I 

 looked at the board and found it covered with 

 one eighth of an inch of beach sand which had 

 been blown about half a mile and over the 

 above ridge, which is completely covered with 

 grass. 



Various means have been adopted to pre- 

 vent the movement of soil by winds. The 

 Moqui Indians do not plow their soil at all. 

 They simply dig a hole in the sand for each 

 hill of corn and then tramp down the dirt 

 with their feet to keep it from blowing away. 

 Many people in the southwest do not plow 

 their ground until the windy season is over. 

 And in the irrigated regions the ground is 

 flooded as soon as plowed. To prevent the 

 movement of soil by the wind as well as to 

 level the land, the farmers of the plains region 

 roll their land or crush it with a weighted 

 plank float. So far as the writer knows, these 

 are the only means now used by farmers to 

 keep the soil from being blown away by the 

 winds. But others could be employed. 



Groves and hedges could be planted on the 

 windward side of fields to break the winds. 

 Also, at least for small farms, wind breaks like 

 those used by railroads as protection against 

 snow and sand drifting in cuts could be used 

 to advantage, especially in regions too dry for 

 the rapid growth of trees and hedges. 



Albert B. Reagan 

 LaPush, Wash. 



A fault in an esker 



About three quarters of a mile from East 

 Templeton, Mass., on the southeast side of the 

 direct road from that town to Gardner, there 

 is a cutting in one of the large, esker-like 

 ridges tsrpical of this locality. The deposit 

 consists of distinct layers of fine, compact 

 sand, with a few beds of gravel, of which the 

 pebbles vary in diameter from less than an 

 inch to six inches. 



Where the stratification is well marked, 

 near the northeastern end of the pit and about 

 half way up the slope, the horizontal beds are 

 found to terminate abruptly against a flat, 

 narrow layer of sand and gravel, striking 

 roughly east and west and dipping 63° north- 

 wards. This layer can be clearly discerned 

 for a distance of more than twenty feet on 

 the face of the pit; but above and below, like 

 the beds which it traverses, it is covered by 

 loose slide material. 



That this layer may represent a fault zone, 

 analogous to a fault breccia, in which the slip- 

 ping destroyed original structures, is sug- 

 gested by two facts : First, the beds are dis- 

 placed; where they are best shown, the order 

 of coarse gravel (2 ft,), &ae, cross-bedded sand 

 (2 ft.), fine gravel (4 in.), and very fine, com- 

 pact sand (10 in.), on the south, is repeated, 

 on the north side of the fault, about two feet 

 lower. Second, the strata on the south side 

 are plainly bent downwards next the fault. 



Whether this dislocation is restricted to the 

 glacial deposit only, or extends down into bed 

 rock, can not be determined, for no bed rock 

 outcrops here. The first supposition (of limi- 

 tation to the deposit) seems most reasonable, 

 since (1) the plane of the displacement is near 

 the steepest slope of the deposit ; (2) it strikes 

 more or less parallel with the length of the 



