GEOLOGY OF THE LAKE PLACID QUADRANGLE 75 



lateral moraines, usually modified and dissected by streams in the 

 brook valleys, often of perplexing character, but suggesting local 

 origin ; and through the presence of poorly developed cirques, on 

 the mountain slopes; and hanging tributary valleys. In 1916 the 

 writer, under the leadership of D. W. Johnson, found in the 

 incipient cirque on the eastern slope of Esther mountain (a portion 

 of the Whiteface massif) a narrow ridge of debris at an altitude 

 of about 3000 feet, some three-fourths of a mile in length. Its form 

 is that of a glacial moraine rather than that oi a landslide. This 

 cirque valley slopes northeast, which offered a favorable opportunity 

 for the continental ice to force a tongue into it and to deposit a 

 recessional moraine; but this would have a crest declinmg south- 

 west, while the moraine found has the opposite inclination. Fur- 

 thermore the northeastern end points slightly toward the axis of 

 the Valley. The moraine is very well preserved and it is incon- 

 ceivable that this ridge of unconsolidated material could have with- 

 stood the destructive forces of the ice sheet. We must, therefore, 

 conclude that local glaciation took place after the withdrawal of 

 the main ice body from the region.^ 



It is sometimes argued that if local glaciers occupied the cirque 

 valleys, small terminal moraines should, in every case, be found 

 at their lower extremities ; their absence being taken as evidence for 

 dating such action before the continental ice invasion, which caused 

 their destruction. The studies of de Martonne in the Alps and 

 the Carpathians show that in regions now undergoing Alpine glacia- 

 tion, where the complications of continental ice bodies are absent, 

 local moraines are seldom prominent features, for the glacial 

 streams destroy them. Thus as a rule only one or two moraines 

 are found in every ten cases examined. 



It is reasonable to expect that local glaciation could not have 

 been limited to the Catskill mountains (which is a region unlikely 

 to support local glaciers) without the Adirondacks likewise experi- 

 encing it ; hence, since local glaciation has been established there,^ 

 it lends weight to the above conclusion. 



^Johnson, D. W., Date of Local Glaciation in the White, Adirondack 

 and Catskill Mountains. 29th Annual Meeting Geol. Soc. Amer., Bui. 28:545- 

 52. 1917. 



^ Rich, John L., Notes on the Physiography and Glacial Geology of 

 the Northern Catskill Mountains, Am. Jour. Sci., 39:154. Feb. 1915. 

 Local Glaciation in the Catskill Mountains, Jour. Geol. 14:113-21. igo6. 

 Local Glaciation in the Catskill Mountains, Geol. Soc. Amer. Bui. 28:133 

 (abstract) 1917. 



