■392 The American Geologist. Jane, 1894 
cial floods, to account for the stratified deposits on the south- 
ern plain which extend more than 500 feet below the present 
level of the ocean, and there is every evidence that said de- 
posits were laid down by glacial streams and not by the waves 
of the sea. There are also stratified beds of sand and gravel 
on the north side of the island, reaching an altitude of nearly 
300 feet above the ocean level, and the evidence shows that 
the streams that laid down one deposited the other. 
On my recent excursion along the north side of the island, 
from Huntington to Port Jefferson, I was more than ever im- 
pressed with the evidence of a great deluge. The great banks 
of stratified material, as exposed in the railroad cuts and 
along the bay indentations, are perfectly astounding. In face 
of such evidence, I am not surprised that some writers look 
upon the glacial theory as a nightmare; for the true till, or 
unmodified drift, is very slight in comparison with the vast 
accumulation of stratified material, especially on this portion 
of the island. Yet, the present writer cannot see how the 
whole of the drift phenomena can be explained without the 
presence of an ice-sheet, and it is a significant fact that those 
who have given the subject the closest study by personal ob- 
servation are the ones who favor the glacial theory. Looking 
at the phenomena as seen on Long Island, I have pictured to 
myself such a scene as may be witnessed in Alaska to-day. 
Professor Wright, in "The Ice Age in North America," page 
54, gives a photograph that might have been taken on Long 
Island when the glacier was retreating from the Atlantic bor- 
der, and while lake Ronkonkoma, and other like depressions, 
were being formed. The lines of moraines, with their kettle- 
holes and valley depressions, the kame ridges and kame deltas, 
the boulder phenomena, and the almost universal mantle of 
silt that cnvers the stratified deposits, not to speak of the vast 
deposits of subglaeial unmodified drift, tell us of a reign of 
iee as well as a deluge of water. 
With our present imperfect knowledge, there are many 
things we are unable to explain, even with the aid of the liv- 
ing glaciers of to-day ; 3 T et the presence of an ice-cap is need- 
ed to render the drift phenomena intelligible. Any attempt 
to explain them on the diluvial theory alone must lead to dis- 
tortion and perversion of facts. 
