1897.] The Inferior Boundary of the Quaternary Era. 111 
lift near the close of the epoch. I may also add that those 
who, like the present writer, are inclined to find between the 
preglacial high-level of the eastern part of North America and 
the immediately succeeding glaciation a relation somewhat 
like cause and effect, see nothing at all improbable in the idea 
of a marked, comparatively rapid, local uplift of the regions 
afterwards glaciated. 
The Ozarkian epoch, as already indicated, was terminated 
by the accumulation of the Kansan ice-sheet and the conse- 
quent depression of much of the land formerly elevated. It 
is here that most geologists wish to open a new era in the 
earth’s geological history. There are, I believe, a number of 
objections to it. Inthe first place, glaciation, although effect- 
ing millions of square miles, was yet local when the entire 
land area of the globe is taken into consideration. Beyond 
the districts actually glaciated, it is often very difficult to ac- 
curately locate in a series of “ effects” those which are chron- 
ologic equivalents of the opening of the Kansan epoch. A 
marked elevation of wide extent would, by reason of its hav- 
ing an observable effect on the streams of the disturbed area, 
and thereby modifying to a certain extent the erosion forms 
produced, be of vastly more utility in establishing a natural 
classification of time than a local accumulation of land ice. 
Furthermore, we have no evidence of any great change in 
climate, and hence in flora and fauna in the unglaciated dis- 
tricts at the opening of the Kansan epoch. Certainly the tem- 
perate species of animals and plants were driven away from 
the near vicinity of the ice, but to what distance we cannot 
say. Indeed, there is no probability that the change in the 
natural history conditions of regions not close to the great 
Quaternary glaciers at the opening of the Kansan epoch, was 
nearly as radical as that which must have resulted upon the 
withdrawal of the sea to beyond the present coasts and the 
general continental uplift and peneplain dissection which 
characterized the early stages of the Ozarkian epoch. If 
change of climate, of the physical features of continents, and 
of the geographic distribution of faunas and floras be accepted 
as the prime essentials in establishing a new era, the opening 
