SURFACE GEOLOGY. 57 



duced by quite different causes. The Wabash and St. John's ridges can 

 hardly, with propriety, be considered ridges, as they are rather belts 

 of knolls and hog's-backs, having no distinct continuity, nor uniformity 

 of altitude ; and they plainly belong to the same category with the gravel 

 hills of Portage, Summit, Medina, and other counties occupying the more 

 easterly portion of the watershed. The materials which compose them 

 are doubtless in part morainic, but they have been rearranged, water- 

 worn, and rounded, as they would not be by glacial action alone. I have 

 compared this class of deposits with the kames and eskers of the Old 

 World, and have considered them the product of breakers dashing over 

 bars and shoals. The "St. Mary's ridge," which forms the divide between 

 the St. Joseph's and Tiffin, and the St. Mary's and Auglaize, is as contin- 

 uous as the lake beaches proper, but it is a- gentle swell in the surface, 

 several miles in width, and is composed mainly of undisturbed Drift 

 olay. 



In contrast with the so-called ridges I have enumerated, the lower 

 three or four embankment-like elevations which traverse the surface par- 

 allel with the lake shore are much lower, narrower, and of a more uni- 

 form level. These are composed of water-washed beach sand and gravel, 

 and contain, in some places, sticks, leaves, and fresh-water shells; and 

 they only are, in my judgment, old lake beaches, washed up along shore 

 lines, and marking different stages in the elevation of the water surface 

 of the Lake. 



Sometimes, instead of forming narrow embankments, the old beaches 

 expand into broad sand-flats, or areas, set with knolls and broken ridges, 

 some of which are shown in Mr. Gilbert's map of the raised beaches 

 north of the Maumee river, here reproduced. 



The following description of the lake ridges of the north-western coun- 

 ties is copied from Mr. Klippart's "Report on the Agriculture of the 

 Maumee Valley," published in the Report of Progress for 1870, p. 321 : 



"A very remarkable feature of the surface of the valley is the distinct outline of 

 ancient beaches, locally known as ' Sand ridge,' ' Oak ridge,' ' Sugar ridge,' found in 

 nearly every county. The principal one of these enters Gorham township, in Fulton 

 county, and passes diagonally in a south-westerly direction, taking in its course the 

 village of Fayette. In this township the ridge has an elevation ranging from 225 feet 

 in the north to 220 feet in the south. From here it passes into the north-eastern 

 corner of Williams county, near the center of Mill Creek township ; thence south- 

 westerly through the village of Hamar, in West Unity. It here has an altitude of 

 230 feet above the Lake. Near Pulaski village it has an elevation of about 200 feet. 

 The towns of Bryan and Williams Center are situated on it. From the latter place it 

 passes into Defiance county, and is divided into two nearly parallel lines, west oi 



