The Loess and the Lansing Man. — Shimek. 359 
The following specific references may be added : Several 
years ago the writer saw a crow picking at a small fresh Unio 
on a timbered riverbluff not less than fifty feet above the river, 
near the state quarries north of Iowa City. The Unio was on 
the ground and was probably brought up from the river, then 
at a low stage, by the crow. 
About twenty-two years ago, while engaged in zoological 
work as a college student, the writer shot a solitary sandpiper 
one of the toes of which was clasped by a living Spaerium 
transversum, a small aquatic bivalve. This might easily have 
been dropped on high ground in one of the longer flights of 
the bird. 
Three years ago the writer found a medium-sized shell of 
Campeloma subsolidnm on a rocky, almost inaccessible slope 
below the University observatory at Iowa City, at a point not 
less than forty feet above the river. The shell, though dead, 
still retained its epidermis. Campeloma snbsolidum live-, 
abundantly in the river, and at low water is often exposed on 
the sand-bars near this bluff, from which blue-jays or other 
birds could have easily carried it for food while it still con- 
tained the soft parts. 
In view of these facts, and of the numerous possibilities 
suggested by them, it is extremely rash to say that "the exist- 
ence of a single aquatic fossil species in the loess requires the 
presence of water." for such shells as those which have been 
mentioned could be covered by dust, and in time become fo>>il> 
in a land-deposit. Manifestly, this "strongest evidence of the 
subaqueous origin of the loess' - is very weak and unsatisfactory. 
The advocates of the aqueous theory can find little solace in 
the fossils of the loess, and without them their case has but 
little tangible support. 
In the papers cited it is assumed : 
i. That there '"were widely extended depressions of our 
vast glacial area," — and that in these depression* ivas 
deposited in water, and by subsequent elevation was brought to 
the present level. 
2. That the streams flowed in ice-walled channels, and the 
swollen rivers were uplifted on them to hights of 150 in 250 
feet above their present beds, and that the floods of thes<' rivers 
deposited loess in successive la; 
