Man ami the Glacial Pirlod. 187 
the excavation of a cistern at his residence. It was found about 
eight feet from the surface at the top of a gravel bed. The 
gravel is overlain l)y a reddish cla}'. This reddish cla}- occu- 
pies a basin of perhaps a square mile in extent, bordered on the 
north and east l)y an elevated upland, on the west by a nearly 
plane lowland tract underlain by bowlder clay and standing 20 to 
40 feet above the basin, and on the south by a line of dunes or 
low sandy ridges fringing the blutl' of the Little Miami river. If 
we examine the l)ordering districts we find a surfact* capping of 
pale silt 3 to 5 feet thick known locally as white clay. This 
white clay (on the uplands at least) is a].>i)arentl\' of the same age 
.as the main loess deposit of the Mississippi basin and is decid- 
edl}' older than a late ice invasion whose outer moraine is found a 
few miles north of Madisonville. Perhaps the Madisonville red 
-claj' is of the same age as the white clay but of this we cannot as 
3^et be certain for the situation is such, being in a lowland tract near 
the Little Miami river, that it might have received deposits at 
the flood stages of that stream down to a- period as late as the late 
ice-invasion a1)0ve referred to, and being in a basin it might have 
received deposits b}^ the wash from the neighboring uplands even 
in postglacial time. It is, therefore, b}' no means easy, and in 
the present stage of investigation is not possible, to fix the exact 
age of the deposit. Even the indefinite chronological term 
"glacial terrace epoch" applied to it by Prof. Wright is not 
sweeping enough to cover all the possible range in time of deposi- 
tion. 
If we turn to the (luestion of method of deposition we shall 
find ourselves even more at sea than in the (juestion of the age 
of the deposits. The chipped stone was lying so near the sur- 
face that there are several ways in which it might have been in- 
truded through natural agencies at almost any time since the red 
clay was deposited. Chief among these agencies are the follow- 
ing: 
1st. By cracking and opening of the clay in seasons of un- 
usual drouth. Cracks eight feet in depth are not at all rare in 
:such deposits. Where a clay is underlain by gravel the con- 
ditions are especially favorable for their formation. 2nd. I3y 
roots of trees. In deposits of this kind the water level is liable 
to become very low in seasons of drouth. This being the case 
such trees as occupy this region, especially the white oak, would 
