104 
The American Geologist. 
February, 1896 
island s northwest side. He also stated that pebbles often are found 
at exceptional hights on the hills because the farmers use sand with 
some contained gravel for bedding in their stables and consequently 
scatter it over their fields at all altitudes. 
Prof. Shaler also cited the custom among the Indians of cooking 
with heated boulders, and as the local limestones and sandstones were 
of no value for this purpose they often brought granitic boulders from 
a distance. In answer to these suggestions, Prof. Wright cited 
boulders of two tons’ weight, which manifestly could not be explained 
in such ways. 
Prof. Angelo Heilprin then mentioned certain polished and grooved 
rocks of South Africa which had been regarded as glaciated. Investi¬ 
gation, however, has shown that the polishing is due to the habit of 
elephants, formerly abundant there, to resort to them and roll and 
scrape on them, and that the grooves are due. to the rubbing of their 
tusks.* 
Mr. Leverett corroborated the observations of Prof. Wright in the 
northern part of the area. 
Four great Kame Areas of icestern Neiv York. H. L. Fairchild, 
Rochester, N. Y. This paper, read only in abstract, described four 
massive deposits of waterlaid drift, of mound and basin topography, 
with peculiar features of altitude and relation. One of the areas lies 
south of Sodus bay, between Lyons and Geneva, and is called the 
Junius area. It is some miles in extent, holding several small lakes, 
and forms the highest ground upon the meridian between lake Ontario 
and the Devonian plateau enclosing the “Finger lakes.” The three 
other areas are south of Irondequoit bay. One occupies the valley of 
the Irondequoit creek, and lies partly below the level of the glacial lake 
Iroquois. Another is the Mendon area, which, with the Irondequoit 
area, was mentioned in the American Geologist for last July (vol. 
xvi, pp. 49, 50). Lastly, the Victor area lies contiguous to the Ironde¬ 
quoit, southward, and is the most massive and elevated of them all, 
rising to 1,100 feet above the sea, and being the highest point in western 
New York north of the Devonian plateau. 
Erosion planes of the glacial lake Warren are evident upon these 
areas, the upper one being considerably under 900 feet. 
The paper described these very massive kame deposits in detail, with 
maps and photographs, and discussed the problems of their formation 
and of the upward transportation of boulders and smaller cobbles and 
pebbles to hights some hundreds of feet above their parent ledges not 
many miles distant. [It is to be published in the next number of the 
Journal of Geology.] 
*Similarly, in western Minnesota and northwestward, boulders are 
often found having their edges and corners smoothly polished by the 
rubbing of buffaloes, which twenty to fifty years ago roamed there in 
countless herds, but now are almost exterminated. (Geology of Min¬ 
nesota, vol. ii, 1888, p. 516.) 
