Valley Loess of Lansing, Kan. — Upham. 25 
VALLEY LOESS AND THE FOSSIL MAN OF 
LANSING, KANSAS.* 
By Wakren Upham, St. Paul, :Minn. 
The deposition of the loess in the ^Missouri and Mississippi 
valleys, forming a most important part of the modified drift 
supplied from the waning- continental ice-sheet, was verv di- 
rectly dependent on a widely extended depression of our vast 
glaciated area, which, from a later part of its records in the 
basin of Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence valley, has 
been named the Champlain depression, characterizing the clos- 
ing stages or Champlain epoch of the Tee age. Looking to 
the causes of the snow and ice accumulation, which prevailed 
during a relatively long time, attended, however, with great 
fluctuations of the ice borders, and to the opposite causes of 
the final departure of the ice-sheet, which occupied compar- 
atively only a short time, we find the Glacial period divisible 
into two epochs. The first was a time of high elevation of the 
lands which became glaciated, as known by river vallevs 
on the continental borders now ver}' deeply submerged 
beneath the sea. Snowfall, instead of rain, predominated 
throughout the year, giving a general though wavering 
growth of the continental icefields, with prolonged work of 
drift erosion and transportation. Tliis was the Glacial epoch, 
as we may term it, comprising the far greater part of the 
Glacial period. But it is less full}' known, as to the details of 
its history, than the ensuing Champlain epoch of depression 
of this glaciated region, when the ice-sheet finally melted away, 
albeit with many vicissitudes of halting and even occasional 
readvance interrupting the glacial retreat. 
In this epoch, begun by the Champlain subsidence of the 
land beneath the immense burden of the ice-sheet, the earliest 
deposits were the loess of the Missouri and Mississippi region 
and the nearly analogous wliite silts on the area drained by 
the Ohio river. With abundant melting of the icefields which 
supplied these very extensive modified drift beds, the weight 
pressing down this part of the earth crust was much diminished, 
allowing it to rise proiiably 300 to 500 feet in this great in- 
* Presented at the meeting of the A. A. A. S. in Washington, Jan. 2, 1903. 
