478 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



Water-worn pebbles, commonly known as gravel beds, are found in the 

 channels of streams, in the valleys under the soil, and over the hrghest mounds 

 and ridges, all over the country. They are encountered north of Ottawa, and 

 extend southward into the Indian Territory, westward to beyond Burlington, 

 and eastward into the State of Missouri. How much beyond the limits indicated 

 they extend I am unable to say, but it is probable that their range is much wider. 

 This, however, can only be determined by an exploration of the adjacent coun- 

 try. Independent of their scientific significance, these beds are important in an 

 economic point of view, affording free underdrainage and supplying good and 

 convenient material for road making. Along the bases of mounds and cliffs, 

 and often for a considerable distance removed from them, as well as on the tops 

 of the highest ridges and mounds, at and near the surface, the rocks often stand 

 vertically to the plane of stratification, or inclined at various degrees from this 

 tine. This is notably conspicuous in many places. 



Not unfrequently old landslides are to be seen projecting from the mounds, 

 or the brink of cliffs and extending out for hundreds of feet. Indeed, the whole 

 country wears the appearance of having once formed the bed of shallow seas, 

 divided into numerous channels of various widths, some of the cliffs during 

 the recession of the waters perhaps forming coast lines while the higher lands 

 may have been low islands. Such is the condition of things conspicuously 

 marked over the entire area named. 



To what cause is this grand work to be attributed ? It could not have been 

 done by rivers, for the pebbles, though water-worn, are too widely distributed 

 for the work of the broadest of such streams. It was not effected by glaciers, for 

 the vast land-slides, the conformation of the mounds and cliffs, the vertical posi- 

 tion of the rocks, where the stratification has been disturbed, the absence of 

 erratic rocks, and the lack of the commingling of the local rocks, all preclude 

 this idea. If it had been caused by glacial action there would have been an 

 intermingling of all the rocks. torn down, indifferently. This, however, is not 

 the case anywhere in the district observed. Neither are the beds composed of 

 altered drift, for if they were so they would be homogeneous in their general dis- 

 tribution ; but this is not found to be the case, for in some localities they are 

 composed of chert alone, while in others they contain small broken fragments of 

 sand-rock alone, in each instance identical with the adjacent local rocks. No 

 erratic, trap, or igneous rocks, or limestone is anywhere to be found intermingled 

 in the beds. The absence of trap and igneous rocks is accounted for from the 

 fact that the glaciers did not extend so far south. The absence of limestone, 

 though the prevailing local rock of the country, will be explained further on. It 

 was not caused by volcanic action, upheavals, or folding of strata, for the under 

 strata rest undisturbed. 



Though evidently not caused by any of these agencies, the mounds, the ter- 

 races, the cliffs and the water-worn pebbles, and broad plains and valleys, are 

 conspicuous, grand, and picturesque, facts which stand out in bold relief in the 

 entire district, and prove a wide-spread destruction of its former surface. The 



