E. W.. Hilgard —The Leess of the Mississippi Valley. 107 
1. Absence of stratification. 
2. Absence of fossils of aqueous origin. 
As to the absence of stratification, it is admitted on all hands 
that even the most typical loess, everywhere, often shows “ bed- 
ding planes;” which manifest themselves more or less by a 
tendency to terraces, or lines of more rapid erosion on the oth- 
erwise vertical walls. This occurs more rarely in the central 
regions of the loess masses; but on the peripheric ones it is not 
only quite frequent, but amounts in some cases to the most un- 
mistakable appearance of aqueous stratification. Such is the 
case in the leess bluffs of the Ohio in Southern Indiana, where 
my attention was called to it by Dr. David Dale Owen. It 
occurs also, though not quite so strikingly defined, along the 
edge of the “American Bottom” in Illinois, opposite and 
above St. Louis. Generally speaking, indications of stratifica- 
tion in the loess are more frequent as we advance from the 
axial and lower regions of a river valley toward the sides and 
eads. 
In the Sixth Annual Report of the Geological Survey of 
Minnesota, Prof. N. H. Winchell pointedly refers to the obvi- 
ous transition of the loess deposits into those of the newer Gla- 
cial period. Similarly, as stated in my Mississippi report (pp. 
195, 298) and in a memoir on the Geology of Lower Louisiana 
(Smithson. Contr., No. 248, pp. 4 and 5), the loess of the Lower 
Is, then, the deposit of the Mississippi trough not a “true 
loess?”—I have compared it carefully, in every respect, with 
the descriptions given of the characteristics of the loess else- 
true that the drainage of the Mississippi “cane hills” has not, 
as a rule, cut cafions with vertical walls, but narrow V-shaped 
