BUFFALO SOCIETY OF NATURAL SCIENCES 69 



partially obliberate even the most prominent of the features of 

 the county. 



The morainal tracts of Erie county are two in number. The 

 first is an eastward extension of a great terminal moraine which 

 first enters New York at the State line near Ripley. This lies 

 parallel to Lake Erie and caps the prominent range of hills which 

 is the divide between the lake and the Allegheny drainage. It 

 enters Erie county at Gowanda and extends eastward up the 

 Cattaraugus valley to the county line and beyond. In Erie 

 county this morainal belt is widest in the town of Collins where 

 it extends from Cattaraugus creek northward for a distance of 

 perhaps two miles. 



The second morainal belt first appears in the town of Brant 

 in scattered patches of drift, thence extends north easterly 

 through East Hamburg, Elma, Marilla, and Alden, and on out 

 of the county towards Batavia. Its greatest width is attained in 

 the towns of Marilla and Alden where it extends from Wales to 

 Alden village. 



At many points in the county are detached morainal deposits. 

 A group in South Buffalo and Eackawanna at the city line and 

 Abbott Road is typical of these, which were probably formed 

 under the ice. 



Both the morainal belts mark pauses in the recession of the 

 glacier. Both are characterized by an undulatory surface dotted 

 with sharp knolls and hillocks, and by a soil made up of the 

 heterogeneous debris of glacier erosion. Boulders are scattered 

 over the surface in profusion and lie thickly imbedded in the 

 finely powdered blue and yellow clay which makes up the bulk 

 of the deposits. 



Erosion and Deposition by Glacial Streams. 



The front of the glacier was the source of strong streams 

 which derived their waters from the melting glaciers. In the 

 earlier stages of glacial advance these waters undoubtedly 

 followed the ancient drainage channels carved out by the 

 preglacial rivers. But as the ice advanced southward it buried 

 and clogged these and the water was forced to find new channels. 

 At the time of the farthest advance of the ice when its front 

 stood at Olean, the waters were led away southwards down the 



