126 G. H. Stone — Glacial Sediments of Maine. 



These kames are heaps or ridges of sand, gravel and coarser 

 matter piled above the surrounding level, usually in places 

 where no ordinary surface stream can have deposited them. 

 They are just such deposits as would be formed in channels 

 between ice walls by waters which retained sufficient velocity 

 to carry off the clay and finer sand. The hypothesis of land 

 ice full} T accounts for the confinement of streams by barriers 

 which now have disappeared. No other adequate physical 

 agent than land ice has been suggested. 



I have thus far not been able to find ravines of erosion in 

 the till to the north of these kames, hence there is no direct 

 evidence that a sub-glacial stream flowed from the north to 

 form the ridge. A better interpretation is that the gravel was 

 deposited in the enlarged sub-glacial channel or pool that 

 formed at the foot of the cascade where a superficial stream 

 fell down a crevasse. They can also be accounted for as 

 having been deposited in deep pools in the bed of a superficial 

 stream. It is not necessary to assume that all the karnes were 

 formed in the same manner. 



The isolated kames vary in size, and many of them are only 

 a few feet wide and high. They appear to have been 

 deposited by small glacial streams that drained only a limited 

 area. In most cases they were probably formed during the 

 last days of the ice. 



2. The hill-side kames. — An interesting class of isolated 

 kames. They are found on the south slopes of rather high 

 hills and at the bottom of the hills they often expand into a 

 plexus of reticulated ridges, and sometimes into a small delta- 

 plain. In this plain we find a gradual transition from coarser 

 to finer sediment as we go southward. This proves that the 

 glacial stream flowed into a body of still water and lost its 

 motion. Such a deposit is in this paper named a delta. Some- 

 times this delta seems to pass by degrees into the valley drift, 

 which proves that the glacial stream flowed out from the front 

 of the ice into a valley over which the ice had already melted. 

 Such is by me termed a frontal delta, or plain, being formed 

 in front of the ice. 



The hill-side kames are found above the contour 230 feet, 

 in the hilly country lying from 50 to 125 miles from the coast. 

 They are quite common in the region specified, especially in 

 the hill country of western Maine, situated south of the An- 

 droscoggin river. They vary in length from a few feet up to 

 a mile or two. In several cases ravines of erosion are found 

 in the till to the north of the kames. Even these small kame- 

 streams eroded the till to a depth or twenty or thirty feet and 

 to a breadth of 100 or even 200 feet. The eroded matter was 

 swept down the hill and helped form a plexus of reticulated 

 ridges or a delta near the base of the hill. In some cases 



