with Raised Beaches of Lake Erie. 285 



they were inevitably modeled at every stage of the water's 

 lingering. Four shore lines above the present are distinguished. 

 The first marks a water level at 220 feet, the second at 195 

 feet, and the third at 170 feet above the Lake, while the fourth 

 records a slow descent from 90 feet to 65 or 60. 



West and north of the first beach — that is, above it — the 

 Erie clay lies undisturbed, with the rolling surface it received 

 from the unequal heaping of the iceberg loads of which it is 

 largely composed. Upon such a surface the result of shore 

 action could not escape notice, and the evidence of its absence 

 is not merely negative in its character. I feel warranted in 

 saying that from the northwest corner of the State to the up- 

 per beach (a horizontal distance of twenty miles with a fall of 

 200 feet), the waters of the glacial sea did not linger in their 

 descent. 



The Upper Beach consists in this region of a single bold 

 ridge of sand, pursuing a remarkably straight course in a north- 

 east and southwest direction, and crossing portions of Defiance, 

 "Williams and Fulton counties. It passes just west of Hicks- 

 ville and Bryan ; while Williams Centre, West Unity and 

 Fayette are built upon it. When Lake Erie stood at this 

 level it was merged at the north with Lake Huron. Its south- 

 west shore crossed Hancock, Putnam, Allen and Yan Wert 

 counties, and stretched northwest, in Indiana, nearly to Fort 

 Wayne. The northwestern shore line, leaving Ohio near the 

 south line of Defiance county, is likewise continued in Indiana, 

 and the two converge at New Haven, six miles east of Fort 

 Wayne. They do not, however, unite, but instead, become 

 parallel, and are continued as the sides of a broad water-course 

 through which the great Lake basin then discharged its sur- 

 plus waters south westward into the valley of the Wabash river, 

 and thence to the Mississippi." 



In so far as it deals with phenomena the above description is 

 graphic and valuable for our purpose, but the references to 

 glacial seas and iceberg drift the author himself would doubt- 

 less throw out were he to revise his paper. Whether or not 

 this glacial lake was merged with Lake Huron at the time this 

 beach was forming is, I think, undetermined, since the moraine 

 that lies between it and Lake Erie has not, so far as I am 

 aware, been traced through southwestern Michigan. It is 

 quite possible that the. ice-sheet occupied the Lake Huron basin 

 at the time as it is known to have occupied the Lake Erie 

 basin. In that case the two basins would not have been united 

 by lake water to the extent suggested by Mr. Gilbert. 



Tracing the Yan Wert ridge westward to the outlet from 

 its eastern terminus near Findlay, we find it passing through 

 the following villages and cities in the order named : Findlay, 



