Foshay — Moraine of Kansan or Nebraskan Age. 345 



Art. XXYIII. — A Moraine of Kansan or Nebraskan Age 

 at Jackson, New Hampshire ; by P. Maxwell Foshay. 



In the summer of 1913 I noted and casually studied a drift 

 deposit at Jackson, New Hampshire, whose real significance 

 did not fully impress me until very recently when I read Pro- 

 fessor Goldthwait's paper* on local glaciers on and about Mt. 

 Washington, together with Fuller's masterly reportf on the 

 Pleistocene of Long Island. 



Professor Goldthwait presents the unmistakable evidence of 

 local glaciers around the northern peaks of the Presidential 

 Kange, which was not so surprising as his discovery that the 

 local glaciation preceded the last general ice invasion. He 

 found no local moraines, nor any till certainly referable to the 

 local glaciers, but he did find that the ice erosional forms of 

 cirques and valleys are very definite.:): 



On Long Island Fuller has been able to differentiate the 

 deposits of four major ice invasions, correlating them with the 

 pre-Kansan (Nebraskan), Kansan, Illinoian and Wisconsin — 

 the latter divisible into two substages each with a strong ter- 

 minal moraine. To reach Long Island these ice sheets of 

 course had to cross the New England states in whole or in 

 part, consequently in each invasion it is safe to predicate that 

 the White Mountains were either covered or surrounded with 

 ice. Leaving aside as apart from the present purpose all other 

 data, particular note is drawn to the degree of decomposition 

 of the rock bowlders and pebbles in the Long Island drift of 

 each age. The granitic materials in the lowest and oldest 

 glacial deposit are described by Fuller as " rotten " , crumbling 

 under hand pressure. In none of the succeeding glacial 

 deposits were the granitic bowlders nearly so decomposed. 



Lying easterly from Mt. Washington and separated from it 

 by Pinkham Notch lies Wildcat Mountain, which again is 

 divided from Carter Dome further east by Carter Notch, as 

 shown on the sketch map herewith. Wildcat Mountain is 

 roughly wedge-shaped with the base of the wedge to the north 

 and the long tapering point to the south, the terminal portions 

 being named Spruce Mountain and Eagle Mountain. Ellis 

 River rises in the Pinkham Notch and forms the westerly 

 boundary of the Wildcat mass, while Wildcat river rises in 



* Following the Trail of Ice Sheet and Valley Glacier on the Presidential 

 Kange, by James Walter Goldthwait, in Appalachia for June 1913. 



f The Geology of Long Island, Myron L. Fuller, U. S. Geol. Survey, Prof. 

 Paper 82, Washington, 1914. 



X See also this Journal, (4), vol. xxxvii, p. 460 (May 1914). 



