592 TEE ICE AGE IN NORTH AMERICA. 



amining the fragments brought up from a shaft which had 

 recently been sunk first through fifty or sixty feet of surface 

 soil, and then for some distance into the rock. The small 

 fragments from the surface of the rock thrown up were 

 most beautifully planed and striated. 



A thorough study of the condition and distribution of 

 the buried forest- beds bears strongly, as I can not but think, 

 against the complete separation of glacial epochs in North 

 America. In addition to the facts about to be enumerated, 

 it is a significant circumstance that the buried vegetable de- 

 posits under consideration do not mark a warm climate, but 

 a climate much colder than the present — such a vegetation, 

 in fact, as would naturally flourish near the ice-margin. The 

 buried forests of southern Ohio have a striking resemblance 

 to those we described in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Peat and 

 hardy coniferous trees are predominant. 



One of the most instructive localities in which to study 

 organic remains embodied in glacial deposits is in the region 

 included in the southern part of Montgomery and the north- 

 ern part of Butler county, Ohio. The glacial deposits con- 

 taining organic remains in that vicinity were first described 

 by Professor Orton, of the Ohio Survey, in 1870.* Near 

 Germantown, on Twin Creek, in Montgomery county, about 

 thirty miles north of Cincinnati, there is exposed, at a, sharp 

 angle of the stream, a perpendicular bank of drift ninety-five 

 feet in height. Underneath this is a deposit of peat as much 

 as fourteen feet thick. The upper portion of the peat " con- 

 tains much undecomposed sphagnous mosses, grasses, and 

 sedges." Both the stratum of peat and the clayey till above 

 " contain many fragments of coniferous wood, some of 

 which can be identified as red cedar (Juniperus Virginia- 

 nus)." Immediately above the peat-bed there is from fifteen 

 to twenty-flve feet of what seems to be true till. This shows 

 no sign of stratification, and abounds in striated stones. 

 Next above occurs a band about ten feet thick of stratified 



* " American Journal of Science," vol. c, 1870,. 



