ANCIENT WATER LEVELS OF CHAMPLAIN HUDSON VALLEYS 107 



Kanesville appear clinging to the sides of the valley in protected 

 coves as high as the 240 foot contour in the vicinity of Comstock 

 and westward. It is evident that these clays have been exten- 

 sively eroded. In the stream valleys this removal may be attri- 

 buted to the streams now flowing in them but in numerous cases 

 along the sides of Wood creek valley the removal of the clays 

 has been accomplished in a manner unaccounted for by stream 

 action. These coves are repeated on the western shore of the 

 southwest arm of Lake Ohamplain in the same series of deposits. 

 The best explanation of them which I have arrived at attributes 

 them to the sliding out of the clays in the manner of the land 

 slips described by the late Dr G. M. Dawson 1 on the clay lauds 

 bordering the St Lawrence. 



The occurrence of the coves on the western sides of valleys is in 

 part explained by the sweeping away of clays by ice action along 

 the eastern wall of the same valleys against which the ice sheet 

 must have pressed with greater force. This admission of the 

 greater age of the clays is in line with the eroded forms which 

 the deposits assume from Kanesville southward to and below 

 Fort Edward in the axis of the long trough before described. 



Northward extension of clays into Champlain valley. The clays 

 of the Wood creek valley, seen in Whitehall and about the 

 northern base of Skene mountain are traceable into the Cham- 

 plain valley proper. At Dresden Center the clays rise to 360 

 feet at least above sea level. Bodies of the clay occur in all the 

 recesses of the narrow river valley or southern part of the lake 

 as far north as Ticonderoga, where they are found as high as 

 400 feet above sea level. 



No marine shells have so far been produced from these clays in 

 this southern part of the Champlain valley or southward over the 

 Fort Edward district. Numerous small and irregularly formed 

 concretions are seen in the clays, and are sometimes reported by 

 the inexpert as shells. 



l Geol. Soc. Am. Bui. 1899. 10:484^90. Remarkable Landslip in Port- 

 neuf County, Ontario. 



