IOWA ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
229 
Some fifteen years ago. a well was bored on a. farm in the southeast 
corner of Jefferson township, Adair County. The writer was present, 
and well remembers that through most of the shaft no pebbles or boulders 
were struck. (The surface clay at; that point is boulder-bearing.) The 
material from this shaft was piled within a rod or less of the well, and 
left there. When taken out; it was a stiff blue Kansan clay. In 1911 
the pile was still there, and the writer examined it. It contained no 
pebbles whatever, had leached out to the characteristic yellow-brown tint, 
still broke with the characteristic' “joint” and was in every respect ex- 
actly similar to the so-called “loess!” No observer could possibly distin- 
guish the two. As a matter cf fact they are one and the same thing. . The 
“loess” is, as its texture and appearance would indicate, merely weath- 
ered Kansan till. It is true that it bears no pebbles, and it is equally 
true that many deeper parts of the Kansan bear no pebbles. It were 
strange indeed had the glacier stirred the plums into the pudding with 
absolute uniformity. Some parts of it are richer than others, as every 
farmer and every well-digger can testify. 
One bit of contributory evidence should be added. The loess of Iowa, 
wherever found, is fossiliferous. Were it to be proved that fossil shells 
occur, within the clay here under discussion, then the theory here ad- 
vanced would not stand. But, as a matter of fact, long and patient 
search has failed to reveal a. single fossil in the leached surface clay 
of Adair County. And the writer ventures the prediction that, if shells 
are found, they will be in the loose soil at the surface, or covered by 
the talus of some bank, but they will not be discovered by excavating 
in the depths of this deposit. It is non-fossiliferous. 
Traversing a road that parallels the Nodaway valley, the writer fol- 
lowed a bank of clay for several miles. The road had been recently 
graded, a cut of three to five feet had been made, and the fresh bank 
gave an excellent opportunity for observation. The clay was typical 
joint clay, leached yellow, with no pebbles and no boulders. So it 
remained for a space of perhaps a couple of miles, when on a hilltop 
attention was suddenly arrested by an angular fragment of Sioux 
Quartzite as large as one’s fist, imbedded in the clay, about eighteen 
inches below the surface, and three feet above the base of the bank. 
With only one side exposed by the scraper of the roadmaker, it hung 
there just as it had been left by the ice. That single fragment of 
quartzite was sufficient refutation of the theory that the surface clay 
of Adair County is of aeolian origin. It was imbedded in a mass of 
so-called “loess” but one may predicate with certainty that no wind 
ever swept over Iowa of sufficient power to blow two-pound stones up 
