36 Frank Carney 
slight reason for thinking that the topographic relations of the 
lowland area north from the Niagara escarpment and the Alle- 
gheny plateau section of central and western New York have 
changed much since the beginning of the Pleistocene period. 
Such being the case, then the duration of the pre-Wisconsin ice- 
dammed lakes determined the emphasis of the shore phenomena 
attained. Existing evidence of these old shore lines must, in ' 
most cases, stand for sharp initial development, as the vigorous 
Wisconsin ice with its great amount of debris tended to obliterate i 
such minor details of pre-Wisconsin topography. 
LANDWARPING. 
Geologists early recognized the proof of instability in the altitude 
of land areas. It was further recognized that the range of verti- 
cal variation is not constant for any great horizontal distance. 
The Great Lakes area has already been shown to be rich in the 
evidence of such deformations. 
That the oscillations in the altitude of northeastern North Amer- 
ica incident to the late Wisconsin® stage and the succeeding stage 
of the Hochelagan formation^ represent the entire range of such 
variations during the Pleistocene period is not necessarily true. 
With marine fossils in clays and sandy clays 540 to 560 feet above 
present sea-level,® and stream-cut channels at least 630 feet below 
present sea-level,® we have an interval of altitude that probably 
dates from the earliest ice-epoch or even earlier. The surprising 
erosion in the Seneca Lake Valley at Watkins, N. Y., reported by 
Tarr, has increased significance when connected with the deduc- 
tions made by Lairchild concerning the ancient valley that leads 
into the Sodus Bay arm of Lake Ontario.^® These deeply buried 
valleys far inland, and mature but riverless valleys seaward, sug- 
gest landwarping of like nature, but of far greater antiquity than 
that proved in the investigations of the Iroquois beach. 
® DeGeer, Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. xxv, pp. 454-477, 1892. 
’ J. B. Woodworth, New York State Museum, Bulletin 8 /j., p, 204, 1905. 
^ J. B. Woodworth, ibid., pp. 215-216, 1905; ibid., Bulletin <?J, pp. 46-50, 1905. 
® R. S. Tarr, American Geologist, vol. xxxiii, p. 277, 1904. Professor Tarr 
reports a well boring at Watkins, N. Y., 1080 feet deep without reaching rock. 
Bulletin Geol. Soc. Am., vol. xvi, pp. 70-71 1905. 
