State Convention—The Soil of Wisconsin. 349 
as it were, conditions of vegetable and animal life that did not pre¬ 
viously exist to any considerable extent in either the frigid or north¬ 
ern and southern temperate zones. For this reason, I trust to be 
excused for introducing in this paper some few geological facts, as 
well as theories, bearing locally upon the subject—far wandering, 
indeed, from the beaten path, in order to reach the most compre¬ 
hensive conclusions which the case seems to warrant. 
The student of geology who may travel westward from Madison 
toward the Blue Mounds, will, as he follows the old county road, 
and at about fifteen miles distance, come upon an ancient beach, so 
well defined and preserved as at once to arrest his attention. If, 
now, he will follow this to its termini, both north and south, he 
will find it continuous, except where broken through by existing 
water-courses, and maintaining a uniform level for a distance of over 
one hundred miles—one end, indeed, being in Illinois, and the other, 
as far as surveyed, reaching near the head of the Chippewa River, 
in Wisconsin. The extremities only grow less defined as they are 
covered or obliterated by later deposits. 
This land-mark of the olden world is worthy of minute investi¬ 
gation, since it determines the limits of the glacial sea; the bound¬ 
ary of the drift in its southwestern progress, and of the extreme 
depression of the continent at the very moment when the frigid 
force had reached its maximum, and from whence the seas com¬ 
menced to retire to their present level. Here, as to Wisconsin, was 
the fixed and final shore-line of the glaciers and the flood, beyond 
which they did not pass, and upon which the command of Omnipo¬ 
tence might well have been put: “Thus far shalt thou go, and 
no farther. Here shall thy proud waves be stayed.” 
Of this plainly-defined boundary of an epoch, it is but proper to 
say that the line, as now seen, crosses hill and dale, over prairies, 
ravines, and through forests and marsh grounds, in a winding and 
sinuous course, as it skirts the ancient shore; its material, in order 
and arrangement, similar in all respects to the beaches of our mod¬ 
ern lakes, only somewhat coarser; preserving a uniform altitude, 
without reference to the present adjacent surface, and that its origin 
is neither the subject of doubt nor dispute among educated men. 
Its present elevation is about one thousand feet above the sea 
level, and it is thus a measure, as it were, of the recession of the 
glacial floods at their culminating point'in the interior of the con- 
