198 Ohio State Academy of Science 



In January, 1901, I began making holes through the ice and 

 testing the bottom by means of an auger welded to an iron rod 

 along which would slide an arm provided with a set-screw, 

 miaking it convenient to push, turn or lift the auger at any depth 

 the rod would reach. The water of the bay is mostly less than 

 12 feet deep. The rod used the first winter was 18 feet long. 

 Where the mud was very deep extensions were put on. The 

 original rod was lost with the point about 30 feet in the mud and 

 S9}i feet below the surface of the ice near the old range lights 

 south of Johnson's Island. Later I used a rod 20 feet long with 

 an extension piece 12 feet long. 



The bottom of the bay is nearly level so that soundings giving 

 the depth of the water do not disclose any valleys (Map IX) . By 

 testing the bottom at numerous points along lines transverse to the 

 general course of the stream it was found that off the mouth of 

 each stream was soft mud containing organic matter and readily 

 distinguished from the glacial drift on either side. It had been 

 thought the glacial clay might be softened by being covered by 

 water so long, but experience showed that as a rule the weight 

 of two men would push the auger but a few inches or a foot or 

 two into this clay, whereas it might be pushed twenty feet or 

 more into the deposits made since the glacier. The agitation of 

 the water by waves has caused the loose mud to fill the original 

 valleys, making the bottom of the bay approximately level. 

 These valleys made by the streams, when they flowed miles 

 farther than now to reach lake level are thus traceable by the 

 lines of soft mud. 



On the maps showing the location of borings it is not a fault 

 •of the draftsman that the lines are not parallel and do not inter- 

 sect others exactly at right angles. On these maps I have 

 attempted to give the location of the borings as actually made, 

 though it may have been the intention to make them along 

 north and south or east and west lines. The difficulties in 

 always carrying out such intentions were several; unreliability 

 of a compass in determining the directions accurately; mist 

 obscuring landmarks I had intended to use; errors in maps and 

 •charts. In some of the earlier work the drawbridge across the 

 bay in the L. S. & M. S. bridge was used as a landmark. After 

 a time it was discovered that more than ten years before the 

 drawbridge had been changed to a position nearly 1000 feet 

 farther southeast but that the charts of Sandusky Bay with 

 corrections to date still represented it in the old position. The 

 platting of work done east of the mouth of Pipe Creek and in the 

 marshes beyond was especially difficult because the border of 

 the marsh is so indefinite and there was nothing in the vicinity 



