FLORISTIC NOTES FROM AN ILLINOIS ESKER. 
BY BIUICE FINK. 
Plates IV-VI. 
Kaneville is a village in Kane county, Illinois, and is situated about 
fourteen miles from Aurora, Illinois, west by a few degrees north. At 
Kaneville, the present writer passed' several years of his boyhood and 
early youth, and here it was that he took his first lessons in natural 
science, learning the names and habits of a considerable number of birds 
and plants and gaining some inklings of the interesting mysteries of 
geological science. 
Northeast of Kaneville, some seven miles, is located the conspicuous 
cdevation, standing some 80 feet above the surrounding country, cover- 
ing about 100 acres, and known as Bald Mound. About two miles 
from Bald Mound, in the direction of Elburn, lies the similar but 
^v’ooded swell of land known as Johnson’s Mound. Passing two or three 
miles southeast of Kaneville, on the Aurora road, one finds at the right 
of the road a rounded hill, near the yard formerly known as the "Billy 
Benton” place, but now ov^rned by Clarence Hiimiston. This hill rises 
to an elevation of about 40 feet above the surrounding prairie and is 
a conspicuous landmark. Passing in the direction of Aurora, one soon 
I'.otices on the opposite side of the road a long gravel hill, of similar 
elevation, at first a mile wide and tumultuously irregular, but soon 
becoming regular and narrow, with a rounded top only two or three 
rods across and sloping downward at an angle of about thirty degrees 
with the horizon. 
These gravel hills and many other similar ones in this portion of 
Illinois were among the unsolved mysteries of youthful days, and the 
summer of 1905 gave the writer the first opportunity, since having 
had some experience in interpreting topographic features and observing 
the accompanying plant life, of studying the familiar till knolls and 
the esker with their fiora. 
The rounded hill at the Hum/iston place, and the long hill into 
which it is continued are a portion of the “Kaneville Esker”, — the bed 
of an extinct subglacial stream. This esker has been traced from 
a point three or four miles northwest of Aurora, to the rounded hill 
noted above and is about eight miles long. Toward Aurora erosion 
has planed the esker down until at present it consists of a series of 
knolls and short ridges, but further northwestward one finds toward 
the Kanesville-ward end of the esker a continuous ridge, from 20 to 60 
feet high, v/ith only occasional gaps, and slopes frequently as high 
as 30 degrees. Still northwestward from the esker proper, which termin- 
ates at the rounded hill, lies the delta of the old subglacial river, cover- 
ing an area of about eight square miles, surrounding the village of 
