DRAINAGE AND MOVEMENTS OF THE LAKE ERIE BASIN. 11 



In the well of the Standard Oil Company, near where Kingsbury run joins tha 

 Cuyahoga river, the section of the drift reported by Newbury,* including the drift 

 bluff above the well, measures 323 feet. Subtracting the 25 feet of delta sand at 

 the top, the remaining 298 feet consists mainly of till, but incloses four distinct 

 seams of stratified sand, ranging from 10 to 18 inches thick, and, below these, three 

 seams of gravel and sand, ranging from 2} to 5 feet thick. Two of these last-named 

 deposits, occurring within the last 20 feet before coming to the shale, are coarse 

 gravel, in each case about 3 feet thick, but the lowest 8 feet are clay (till). In the 

 entire 298 feet from the top to the base of the till, it incloses at that locality an 

 aggregate of only 17 feet of the intercalated seams of modified drift. 



Probable drainage Conditions op the Lake Erie Basin before the Ice Age. 



The area now occupied by the great Laurentian lakes tributary to the Saint Law- 

 rence river seems to me to have probably discharged its drainage during the Ter- 

 tiary era and until the Glacial period in the opposite direction, flowing west and 

 south to a trunk stream which ran along the bed of lake Michigan and onward to 

 the gulf of Mexico. This view I have more fully stated in another paper pre- 

 sented at this meeting, f and therefore need not dwell especially upon it here. 

 Through the very long Tertiary era a great river system, if my view be true, flowed 

 with continuous and unobstructed slopes westward and southward, where later, 

 by the epeirogenic movements preceding and accompanying the accumulation and 

 departure of the ice-sheet, the earth's crust became deformed so that portions of 

 the former river valleys are now depressed to maximum depths (in the beds of 

 lakes Ontario and Superior) of nearly 500 feet beneath the sea level. 



The preglacial drainage channels, now largely drift-filled, which connected the 

 Laurentian lakes have been well studied by Mr J. W. Spencer, who concludes 

 that such a channel joins lake Ontario with Georgian bay, passing along the north- 

 ern side of the great Xiagara escarpment; but I differ from him in my belief that 

 the Tertiary and preglacial river of these basins and channel flowed westward, 

 whereas he supposes it to have run easterly to the gulf of Saint Lawrence, in accord- 

 ance with which view he has named it the Laurentian river. X 



Very probably the Erie basin outflowed northwestward, with descent away from 

 the more elevated Appalachian mountain belt, either to the west part of the val- 

 ley which is now lake Ontario, or in part or wholly past lake Saint Clair directly into 

 the lake Huron valley. The westerly converging streams of these three lower 

 Laurentian lakes, according to my view, united with a great river from the lake 

 Superior basin, so forming the Michigan river, which thence passed south to the 

 sea. 



Epeirookntc Movements during the Quaternary Eka. 



The deep preglacial valleys of the Cuyahoga and Rocky rivers, tributary to the 

 basin which now holds lake Erie, testify, with man} T other similarly deep and 

 drift-filled preglacial river courses, throughout the interior of our country, that 

 immediately before the Ice age this continent was uplifted much above its present 



* Geology of Ohio, vol. ii, 1874, p. 24. 



t" Origin and Age of the Laurentian Lakes and of Niagara Falls," published in the American 

 Geologist, Sept., 189G. 



% Proceedings of the Am. Assoc, for Adv. of Science, vol. xliii, for 1894, pp. 237-243; and numer- 

 ous earlier papers. 



