672 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
no special attention except to test the permanancy of previous study and conclu- 
sions. This they did satisfactorily. 
Passing on a few hundred yards, they came to a railroad cut, showing at 
the bottom a red deposit with rounded pebbles of all kinds scattered through it,^ 
and above, with a distinct line of division between the two, a yellowish colored 
bed made up of fine sand and no pebbles. This dividing line varies in height^ 
often with wavy outline as the slope of the cut was washed into in places, some- 
times running out of sight at .the level of the track and again disappearing at the 
top of the slope. An explanation of this varying line between dissimilar deposits 
is the sixth problem. Nine, after following the undulations of the line for some 
distance, concludes that there were hills and valleys in the lower red layer when 
the buff layer began to be deposited, and that the curved line marks the outline 
of the old surface. Problem seven inquires what were the conditions under 
which the top and bottom layers were deposited, runningor standing water ? Its- 
absence of pebbles and entire composition of minute particles led Nine to con- 
clude, after a suggestive question or two, that the top stratum must have settled 
to the bottom of quiet water like a vast lake, and that the small rounded pebbles 
in the bottom layer must have been pushed and tumbled to their places by gently 
running water. Shells of various kinds in the upper layer suggested for problem^ 
eight the inquiry as to how they came there. The bottom of ponds, from which 
specimens had previously been collected, with living and dead shells in the soft 
fine mud, soon to be covered out of sight by a later deposit of mud from soil 
washed in by the next rain, furnished to all a ready and satisfactory answer. 
A little further on, a bone sticking out from a bank twenty inches below 
the turf-grown surface, furnishes for problem nine the question whether it is of 
ancient or recent origin. By digging the earth away from around it, a strip of 
tin from a cast-off cooking vessel soon came to light, and on the same level with 
the bone several fragments of brick, which proved to even the youngest that the 
bone had lain there no longer than the tin and brick, and, consequently, was 
recent. Its toughness when pounded, showing the presence still of animal mat- 
ter, and its equine characteristics, make the conclusion still more satisfactory. 
Nearer the river they find large boulders of limestone, granite, etc., with 
no sharp corners or edges but all with a more or less rounded form. Problem- 
ten inquires how they came thus rounded. Seven answers at once, "by being, 
rolled and bumped against other stones by running water." At a sudden bend 
in the river, on a slope of the bluff" which deflects the river's course, was found 
a large pile of rocks of all kinds and sizes, some entirely unlike any in beds 
within hundreds of miles. And problem eleven asks how they came there and 
where they came from. Nine explains that they were frozen in cakes of ice^ 
floated down the river in the spring, perhaps from a great distance, lodged on 
the slope in a "block" of the ice, and left there when the river fell and the ice 
melted. Nine also notices, near the water's edge on the gradual slope of the 
river bank, the benches or stair-like surfaces one above another, and recognizes- 
them as miniature illustrations of the terraces along the Connecticut River, left 
