340 



THE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



the various subsoils laid bare. Occasionally, ridges may be 

 tracked continuously for several miles, running like great arti- 

 ficial ramparts across the country. These vary in breadth and 

 height, some of the more conspicuous ones being upward of 

 four or five hundred feet broad at the base, and sloping upward 

 at an angle of twenty-five or even thirty-five degrees, to a height 

 of sixty feet and more above the general surface of the ground. 

 It is most common, however, to find mounds and ridges con- 

 fusedly intermingled, crossing and recrossing each other at all 

 angles, so as to inclose deep hollows and pits between. Seen 

 from some dominant point, such an assemblage of kames, as 

 they are called, looks like a tumbled sea — the ground now 

 swelling into long undulations, now rising suddenly into beau- 

 tiful peaks and cones, and anon curving up in sharp ridges 

 that often wheel suddenly round so as to inclose a lakelet of 

 bright clear water.* 



From this description it will be seen that there are some 

 remarkable resemblances between kames and terminal mo- 

 raines, since both of them are characterized by confused 

 hummocks and tortuous ridges of glacial debris, connected 

 with numerous bowl-shaped depressions, often containing 



N.W 



S. E. 



Fig. 102.— Section of kame near Dover, New Hampshire. Length, three hundred feet ; height 

 forty feet ; hase, about forty feet above the Cochecho River, or seventy-five feet 

 above the sea. a, a, gray clay ; b, fine sand ; c, c, coarse gravel containing pebbles 

 from six inches to one foot and a half in diameter ; d, d, fine gravel. (.Upham.) 



lakelets. But in other respects there is a marked difference 

 between them. In the first place, the material of which 

 kames are formed is ordinarily much finer and more water- 

 worn, and shows more abundant signs of stratification than 

 that of which terminal moraines are composed. Secondly, 

 while the terminal moraine forms a ridge at right angles to 

 the motion of the glacier, and marks the limit of its exten- 



* "The Great Ice Age," pp. 210, 211. 



