1 882.] The Loess of North America. 371 



deposits in the Wabash valley, which are considered contempo- 

 raneous with the loess of the Rhine." At about the same time 

 loe v ss was found by Whittles}- 1 on the south shore of Lake Erie, 

 and from the presence of fresh-water shells he likewise inferred 

 that the formation belonged to the age of the Rhenish lacustrine 

 deposits. In writing on the superficial geology of the Lake Supe- 

 rior section, E. Desor concludes that " though the terraces of 

 Mackinac differ widely in composition from the loam, or loess, of 

 Lakes Erie and Huron, yet, the fact that both are posterior to the 

 drift and occur at similar heights on the coast of the same lake, 

 seems to warrant the conclusion that they may have been simul- 

 taneous.'" Whether those deposits are to be considered true loess, 

 we are not prepared to state. 



The field of discovery and study now again reverted to the 

 south, for, in 1854, was published Wailes* account of this forma- 

 tion as existing in Mississippi. One year later appeared Swallow's 

 u First and Second Reports on the Geology of Missouri," in which 

 is given, for the first time, a full account of the loess, to which 

 Professor Swallow applies the name of " bluff formation." This 

 work was followed in the succeeding year, 1856, by Owen's " Re- 

 port on the Geology of Kentucky," in which occur numerous 

 references to the loess of that State. In the same year was pub- 

 lished Volume in of the Pacific Railroad Reports, in which W. 

 P. Blake, in giving an account of the geology of the thirty-fifth 

 parallel, extends the geographical distribution of the loess to 

 twenty- six miles above Fort Washita on the Red river, and 

 quotes the observations of Shumard, made in the same section 

 during the explorations under charge of Captain Marcy, in 1852.- 

 In i860, E. W. Hilgard, in his "Agriculture and Geology of 

 Mississippi," gave the most complete account of the loess of the 

 south yet published. In Nebraska, during the year 1867, it was 

 studied by Dr. Hayden, and later by Prof. Aughey, who pub- 

 lished an account of the surface geology of that State in Hay- 

 den's Annual Report for 1874. Meanwhile, Safford in Tennessee 

 had published, in 1869, his account of the geology of that sec- 

 tion; and White's " Geology of Iowa," which appeared in 1870, 



'Report on the Geology of the Lake Superior Und District, l8 5 t, Foster & Whit- 





