118 The American Geologist. August, i897 
teenth to an eightli of an inch in diameter, but increase in 
size with depth, reaching two or three inclies diameter. Old 
surfaces in the ciits are crusted over, and have lost their 
brightness of color, becoming grayisli red. Underneath this 
crust the clay is loosened up and is soft and spongy for six or 
eight inches. The fresh wet cla}' in the ditches has the quali 
ty and fineness of cocoa butter and its purity and homogene- 
ous composition are quite remarkable. 
The railroad follows the creek pretty closely, but is most of 
the time 30 to 90 feet above it. The creek tlows rapidly in a 
rather narrow trench -cut mostly in stony drift. It frequently 
encounters rock ledges, and is much choked with boulders. 
The bottom of the clay rests generally on gra3nsh colored 
drift in the bank of the stream 10 to 30 or 40 feet above the 
water. The red bed appears originally to have covered the 
bottom of the valley and extended up its sloping sides for 
some distance. But its whole surface so far as seen is deeply 
gullied, forming a series of ridges sloping down from the val- 
ley sides toward the creek. The railway cuts across the low- 
er ends of these ridges, and it was in these cuts that all the 
sections were seen. No part of the clay bed was seen which 
presented a plane surface free from gullies, but in one or two 
expanded parts of the valley the even tops of the ridges indi- 
cated the former existence of such a surface. The forms of 
the gullies suggest a considerable period of erosion. Their 
sides were no doubt steep blutfs at one time, but they have 
been worn down to gentler slopes and ap]«'ar to have attained 
a stable form. 
The Sunshine clays, as I call them, indicate an interesting 
incident of the glacial recession for this region, and they point 
clearly to a diiferent history from that suggested by some of 
the early geologists who visited it. The clays themselves, 
while conspicuously lacking, so far as seen, in the horizontal 
laminations that generally mark fine deposits laid down in 
still water, are nevertheless, plainly enough, waterlaid. Their 
extreme fineness and perfect homogeneity with entire absence 
of boulders, pebbles, gravel, and even of sand or silt, with the 
exceptions mentioned above, puts them outside of the class of 
boulder clay or ice-laid drift. There are places in the sections 
where a glance ffom a passing train suggests boulders in the 
