I. G. White — Bowlders at high altitudes. 375 



dence would seem to be conclusive that these valleys had been 

 eroded to near their present depths before the deposition of the 

 rounded bowlders, clay, logs, leaves, and other trash that consti- 

 tute the deposits. The single fact that they disappear abruptly 

 would seem to be sufficient evidence that they did not originate, 

 as some have supposed, from the detrital matter which the 

 streams left along their banks in the original erosion of these 

 valleys. No one, it seems to me, could question the submergence 

 of the upper Ohio valley in recent geological times, who has 

 carefully examined the deposits in the old, and abandoned 

 Teazes valley, along the C. & O. E. R., through Mason and 

 Cabbell counties, West Virginia. Hence I think the submerg- 

 ence may be considered as established ; the only question open 

 being whether this submergence was general, involving a con- 

 tinental movement, submerging the valleys east from the Alle- 

 gheny Mountains, as well as those west from the same, or 

 whether the submergence of the Ohio and its tributaries was of 

 a local character and accomplished through the agency of the 

 glacial dam which Professor Wright believes existed in the 

 region of Cincinnati. Some of the facts now to be enumerated 

 may be equally well explained on either hypothesis. 



About ten miles above the mouth of the Big Sandy River, and 

 on the West Virginia side, a considerable deposit of small water- 

 worn bowlders occurs near the summit of a broad, flat-topped 

 hill, at an elevation of 400 feet above the stream, or not far from 

 900 above tide. This deposit is interesting from the fact that 

 it is the only one that I was able to find between the point 

 in question and the source of the river, nearly 200 miles above, 

 though the failure may be satisfactorily accounted for by the 

 precipitous character of the bounding valley walls, and the 

 unusually soft and easily disintegrated nature of all the surface 

 rocks; for all along the Big Sandy, even the Pottsville con- 

 glomerate becomes rotten, and very readily crumbles into 

 loose sand, which, carried down by the rain, fills up the chan- 

 nel of the river and has thus given name to the stream. It 

 is not assuming too much to state that these rounded bowl- 

 ders of local coal-measure sandstone could hardly have resisted 

 the elements during the long time since the Big Sandy valley 

 existed at this 400-foot level. 



The Gruyandotte river puts into the Ohio next above the 

 Big Sandy, and on this stream about 100 miles above its mouth, 

 a large deposit of rounded bowlders was observed on the inner 

 side of one of its curves opposite the mouth of Panther Creek. 

 The bowlders cease at 150 feet above the stream, or about 925 

 feet above tide, according to levels run by Captain Miller, of 

 the Trans-flat Top Land Company. 



The bowlder deposits are found in greatest quantity about 



