KAMES OF ORISKANY VALLEY. 19 



like bodies of stratified drift as are directly associated with the kame 

 aggregations of the valley. It is believed that in some cases they were 

 deposited in considerable bodies of water, rendering appropriate the term 

 " delta terrace ; ' but the internal structure is not sufficiently revealed 

 in all cases to warrant this, nor would the frontal deposits thus be dis- 

 tinguished from certain other deltas built into the flooded valley at the 

 mouth of lateral streams. It should be observed that the frontal terrace 

 has characters in common with the kame terrace, the sand plain, and the 

 glacio-fluvial apron.* 



KAMES. 



Oriskany Valley area. — These kames occupy the Oriskany valley in a 

 massive wa^v for a distance of seven miles, from Deansville past Oriskany 

 Falls to Solsville, where they graduate into the frontal terraces yet to be 

 described. This great extension is due to the diagonal position of the 

 valley in relation to the general ice movement. A longer section of the 

 valley was thus brought within the east and west morainic belt of which 

 the kames are a part, and earlier stagnation of the valley ice was induced 

 at the same time. On the northwest side of the valley the kame belt is 

 narrow, varying in width between one-fourth and one-half mile. Near 

 Oriskany Falls it is absent, exposing extensive ledges of rocks of Helder- 

 berg and Oriskany age. The main body of the kames lies on the south- 

 east side of the valley, from one to one and a half miles wide, and nearly 

 cut into two masses south of Oriskany Falls, where a transverse passage 

 was kept open by a subordinate ice-tongue springing from the principal 

 ice-mass at the axis of the valley. The kames are of typical develop- 

 ment adjacent to the stream, whose course is constricted and tortuous 

 through the moraine from Solsville to Oriskany Falls, but broadens to a 

 quarter of a mile, and runs quite directly from the latter place to Deans- 

 ville. The relief is usually less sharp as one recedes from the stream, 

 and not uncommonly toward the main valley wall the accumulations 

 assume the form of massive shoulders of drift. They are thus brought 

 into somewhat close relation with the kame terraces described in a later 

 section of this paper. Individual knolls at Oriskany Falls have a height 

 of 90 feet, and the main mass rises to 175 feet above the railway at the 

 station. Individual knobs rise 25 to 50 feet higher, making a total relief 

 of 225 feet. Below the present valley level the depth may be as much 

 more, for the original trench is wide and the stream is crowded toward 

 the northwest, where it has encountered a spur of limestone, over which 

 it falls for about 15 feet. On the southeast for some distance the surface 

 of the drift drops off to a broad shallow sag against the valley side. Far- 



* The Great Ice Age. Geikie. Glacial Phenomena of North America. T. C. Chamberlin ; p. 749. 



