226 The American Geologist. OctoiKM-, 18% 
claims that the icp retired from the lake Superior basin and the Red 
river valley earlier than from the hifirhlands about lake Itasca and the 
Mesabi range. The abrupt rise of more than 1,000 feet from lake Supe- 
rior to the highlands on the north is supposed not to have affected the 
direction of the so-called Leaf Hills and Itasca moraines. The Mesabi 
moraine is represented as descending 200 feet from the watershed north 
of the Mississippi to Red lake with a, retreating angle, instead of an ad- 
vancing front which it should have according to analogy with the pre- 
vious lobation farther south. 
2. It does not represent the ice-sheet as retiring in the proper direc- 
tion to explain the formation of the early stages of lake Superior, nor is 
it in harmony with the glacial movements of recession producing the 
stages of lakes Warren and Algonquin. 
3. It does not agree with the observed directions of striiB, particular- 
ly those about Duluth and Carlton, Minn., which bear mostly W. S. W., 
and thope on the upper portion of the Big Fork river, which bear large- 
ly westward or perhaps eastward. 
4. It does not harmonize with the observed distribution of boulders. 
The basin of the upper Mississippi lacks limestone boulders, while they 
abound to the west and north of its watershed. Moreover, Mr. J. E. 
Spurr, in the same Twenty-second Annual Report, states that in north- 
eastern Minnesota the moraine correlated with that of the Leaf Hills 
by Upham, as also the drift north of it for some distance, has clearly 
been derived from the northeast or east. 
f). It disagrees with several morainic areas more recently observed by 
the author, notably with a moraine belt passing south of Turtle River 
lake and Turtle lake and curving south across Grant creek and west of 
Schoolcraft river into Hubbard county, and with another which passes 
north of Cass lake, thence across the Mississippi, and along the south- 
west side of lake Kabecona and south of Leech lake. These moraines 
are sufficient to indicate a north and south trend over this portion of 
the state. 
In view of these and other facts, a new mapjnng of the moraines in 
north central Minnesota was offered, referring them to two great lobes 
of the ancient ice-sheet, a shorter one moving southwest through the 
lake Superior basin, and a longer one moving around this from the 
northeast to the west and southwest. In their recession, these lobes 
formed successive slender and more or less curved reentrant angles, 
producing interlobate moraines, one arm of each being formed on the 
west side of the Lake Superior lobe, and the other arm along the east 
side of the Red River lobe. The apex of this angle advanced toward 
the northeast until it grew into a slender moraine, probably traceable 
along the Mesabi range. The courses of the moraines, according with 
this view, were indicated in detail \)y a map. 
16. Notes o)i certain Fossil Plants from the Carboniferous of Iowa. 
Thomas H. Macbkide. Microscopic slides, showing sections of the 
stems of a Sigillaria, probably S. vascularis Binney, from the Des 
Moines beds of the Iowa Carboniferous, were exhibited. The woody 
