12 
IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
The topography of western Washington ranges from tide-flats to 
mountain heights among the highest on the continent; but the temper- 
ature at any altitude is uniform, varying regularly in summer and 
winter within moderate limits. Mt. Rainier, however, carries its burden 
of perpetual snow with half a dozen real glaciers, and its high slopes 
are liable at all seasons to violent winds and storms. As fierce a thun- 
der storm as it has been my lot to witness prevailed in August last on 
Mt. Rainier at an altitude of 8,000 feet and upward. But rain in winter 
in western Washington generally, tho sometimes very persistent, is ordi- 
narily of the gentlest sort. It rains, and rains and rains, but, as would 
appear, there occurs nothing comparable to what we should call a cloud- 
burst, nothing torrential, at least, east of the Olympic mountains. 
It remains to mention one other factor in the problem, if the stage 
on which Life’s drama is unrolled is to be at all adequately described; 
we must mention the terrene; what the Germans fortunately call the 
“Bodm,” the groundwork of rocks and soils whose variety of form and 
composition everywhere determines to greater or less extent the facies, 
the final expression of the living world. 
We may not here go far, may not discuss the geology of our region 
further than to say that almost everywhere we have to do with soils of 
glacial origin, so that the Iowa student is at once very much at home. 
Curiously enough, too, we have about Puget Sound evidence of at least 
two invasions of glacial ice with the usual interglacial interval, and the 
oldest deposit in sight, the Admiralty Till, is tough and bluish, > suggest- 
ing instantly the famous blue clay of our valley states. 
The drift about Puget Sound then, covers practically the whole coun- 
try from the Cascades to the sea, and is enormously thick; exposures 
hundreds of feet in thickness may be seen almost anywhere near the 
water-edge. Interglacial deposits and modified drift-sheets make up the 
bulk of what appears above the basal till; how thick that is, and what 
may be immediately beneath is still uncertain. But if one may judge 
by the amount of erosion suffered, the upper till, the so-called Vashon 
drift, is very recent indeed. Where well exposed, it is sculptured by 
the most precipitous short ravines, cutting back through all the inter- 
glacial assorted sands and gravels, in most singular fashion; all well 
displayed within the city of Tacoma. In fact, it appears that this great 
mass of drift, notwithstanding its remarkable thickness, is nevertheless 
extremely loose and porous. Even the water-laid sheets of sand, often 
very solid, are lenticular and so articulated with beds of gravel as not 
at all to interfere with the ultimate descent of surface water. The 
result of the entire structure is a universal seepage around the Sound, 
