294 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
solved. This cut, of upward of 2,000 yards in length and ranging from ten to 
ninety feet in depth, is entirely in the Loess formation. A portion of the excava- 
tion was made during the months of November and December of 1879, under 
very unusual circumstances. It was very dry, and yet there was a succession of 
a number of long mist-like rains. And during this period of these rainfalls there 
was hardly any perceptible wind. 
The rainfalls were simply sufficient to moisten the smooth sides of the cut, 
without any wash, or disintegration of the surface. The result was an oxydized 
effloresence of minerals unequally distributed, at different horizons. This oxyda- 
tion produced distinct color lines, clearly revealing stratified deposits of from 
three to twenty inches in depth. 
Subsequent heavier rains, with winds, largely mixed and removed these 
colors ; yet some still remain quite distinct after an exposure of from three to six 
months. 
Since reaching the grade level (some sixty days), several rather severe storms 
have fallen. The line of the cut, somewhat tortuous, offers faces, on the one 
side or the other, to any and all points of the compass. And those portions of the 
walls which have been subjected to a certain kind and amonnt ef wear from these 
storms, exhibit clear and distinct lines of stratification; their lines of softer mate- 
rial being removed from between the different strata of from three to fifteen inches 
in depth. 
Portions which have exhibited these lines clearly, are now by further action 
so far broken down and disintegrated that they yield no evidence of stratification, 
thus exhibiting the method by which all lines in exposure of this formation have 
been obscured. Many of these strata, under the peculiar action of the storms, 
are again subdivided into deeply cleft paper-like thicknesses. 
Near the east end of the cut is a very interesting exhibition of the debris of 
an ancient iceberg. This debris so far as exposed (the cut passing through one 
side of it), is in a conical heap of ten feet in height, and about eighty feet in 
diameter. The material is of such a diversified character as could only be obtained 
by a very long travel as a glacier, till it reached the shores of the great lake which 
then covered these Loess plains; into which it fell, after the manner now fre- 
quently seen, on the coasts of Greenland, of the glacier breaking ‘rom the 
mass and floating off on the ocean as an iceberg. So this glacier became an ice- 
berg and floated southwardly, tillit was stranded at this point; and here in time dis- 
solved and deposited this as yet unknown amount of debris. 
The remains of this iceberg give us both indirect and direct evidence of our 
theory of subaqueous deposit. Indirect—by this proof of an extensive inland 
water, on which alone this berg could be transported. And direct, by the dis- 
tinct lines of stratification, both in colors and weathered lines, passing conform- 
ably over this mound of debris. 
Any honest doubter of the subaqueous theory can drop his doubts into the 
debris of the past on a brief examination of the evidence which this cut now 
exhibits. 
