r34 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



barrier that could ever have held the waters against the slopes 

 of the higher ground so as to produce the bluffs by stream eros- 

 ion. The glacier was not only a competent agent, but all the 

 facts prove that it was the agent. 



Where embayments held slack water, as at Oneida, the banks 

 and channel features are wanting. The salients or exposed hills, 

 whether drumlins, moraines or outliers of shale, have their north 

 flanks cut into banks or bluffs, attesting the work of vigor- 

 ous currents. At many places these long, steep banks are very 

 conspicuous phenomena, (see pi. 11-31) At first sight the 

 suggestion might be entertained that the banks had been pro- 

 duced by wave cutting, specially since they lie near the level of 

 Lake Iroquois, and in the same great basin. A very little study 

 of the subject, however, disproves the idea of wave erosion. In 

 order to forestall profitless discussion, the argument may be 

 briefly stated. 



As a general statement, it may be said that the banks do not 

 have the characters of wave-cut cliffs. Opportunity for com- 

 parison is at hand, as only a few miles to the northward are the 

 undoubted wave-cut cliffs on the drift hills which stood as 

 islands in the waters of Lake Iroquois. The slopes under dis- 

 cussion have an entirelv different form, character and relation- 

 ship to the surrounding surfaces from the Iroquois cliffs. These 

 stream banks lie on the side of the hill or salient where a theo- 

 retic stream would erode, and nowhere else. They do not occur 

 on the sides of the hill where wave action should have been ef- 

 fective if the latter were the agency. The banks do not curve 

 around the hills like wave-eroded notches, but usually form 

 long, comparatively straight bluffs, strongest on the northwest 

 flanks. Many of the banks lie at an altitude much above the 

 level of Lake Iroquois, and above the highest undoubted Iroquois 

 cliffs in the Syracuse region. The banks are cut in the Salina 

 shale rock, and are larger and stronger every way than the 

 Iroquois cliffs. Indeed the strongest of the Iroquois wave cut- 

 tings in the Syracuse region does not compare in quantitative 

 effect with the weaker of the stream-cut rock bluffs. Moreover, 



