ORIGIN OF THE LOKSS 143 



counties (i. e., in central Iowa) and only less commonly in Cedar, Muscatine, and 

 Scott counties, loess-kindchen and pebbles (sometimes striated) may be seen inter- 

 mingled if not united." 



McGee also observed, and fully described, a geographic transition from 

 the drift to the loess. This zone of transition may be many miles in 

 width, and it skirts along the southern boundary of the lowan drift- 

 sheet. Professor J. E. Todd has described a similar transition in Soutli 

 Dakota.^ Further details are unnecessary. It is designed at this point 

 only to call attention to the fact that water only can be said to have 

 supplemented and followed, or to have cooperated with, ice in the pro- 

 duction of such a joint product. 



STRA TIFICA TION OF THE LOESS 



In the next place, after careful inspection of the loess at Council Bluffs, 

 Iowa, at Leavenworth, Kansas, and at Saint Joseph, Missouri, since the 

 discovery of human remains at Lansing, Kansas, I am satisfied that it 

 shows at all those points either evident horizontal lamination or such 

 remnants of it that it can be safely affirmed that originally it was wholl}^ 

 stratified and water-laid. At Council Bluffs the stratification was seen at 

 the brick yards. The lowest portion seen consists of sand or sandy loess. 

 In the upper portion of the deposit at the brick yards the stratification is 

 less evident, but its presence is plainly indicated by the structures which 

 were subsequently seen more perfect at Saint Joseph. At Leavenworth, 

 at the brick yards, a mass of the loess has slid bodily down a sloping rock 

 bluff. While the most of this sliding mass has lost its evident laminated 

 structure, yet a coarse, broken stratification is preserved. It is preserved 

 completely along its bottom parts, where a heavy, darker,^stratum main- 

 tains its form, although the whole mass is inclined at an angle of about 

 25 degrees from the horizon. This is near the very top of the loess de- 

 posit at that place, perhaps 150 feet above the river. Although a pho- 

 tograph was made of this tilted stratification, the structure is not well 

 brought out in the print.f At Saint Joseph, with the cooperation of 

 Miss Luella Owen, several very interesting facts were brought to light. 

 These may be summarized as follows : 



There are suggestions of former stratification in the homogeneous 

 bluffs where exposed by cutting of streets, some of the perpendicular 

 walls being 50 or 75 feet high. These consist of — 



a. Layered arrangement of the shells with which the loess is sprinkled, 

 indicating a surface on which the shells lived or had been gathered 

 together. 



♦Bulletin no. 158, U. S. Geological Society, p. 93, 189'J. 



fMr J. V. Blower, president of the Quivira Historical Society, made this and other photographs 



