Man and the Glacial PeriodWright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
History
Man and the Glacial Period
Wright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
Glacial epoch; Prehistoric peoples
The same line of reasoning is conclusive respecting the innumerable
boulders which cover the northern portion of Ohio, where I have my
residence. The whole State of Ohio, and indeed almost the entire
Mississippi basin between the Appalachian and the Rocky Mountains, is
completely covered, and to a great depth, with stratified rocks which
have been but slightly disturbed in the elevation of the continent; yet,
down to an irregular border-line running east and west, granitic boulders
everywhere occur in great numbers. In the locality spoken of in northern
Ohio the elevation of the country is from two hundred to five hundred
feet above the level of Lake Erie. The nearest outcrops of granitic rock
occur about four hundred miles to the north, in Canada. After the meeting
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Toronto
in the summer of 1889, I had the privilege of joining a company of
geologists in an excursion, conducted by members of the Canadian Survey,
to visit the region beyond Lake Nipissing, north of Lake Huron, where
the ancient Laurentian and Huronian rocks are most typically developed.
I took advantage of the trip to collect specimens of a great variety of
the granites and gneisses and metamorphic schists and trap-rock of the
region. On bringing them home I turned them over to the professor of
geology, who at once set his class at work to see if they could match my
fragments from Canada with corresponding fragments from the boulders of
the vicinity. To the great gratification, both of the pupils and myself,
they were able to do so in almost every case; and so they might have
done in any county or township to the south until reaching the limit of
glacier action which I had previously mapped. Here, at Oberlin, on the
north side of the water-shed, it is possible to imagine that we are on
the southern border of an ancient lake upon whose bosom floating ice
had brought these objects from their distant home in Canada. But this
theory would not apply to the portion of the State which is south of the
water-shed and which slopes rapidly towards the Gulf of Mexico. Yet the
distribution of boulders is practically uniform over the glaciated area
on both sides of the water-shed, constituting thus an indisputable proof
of the glacial theory.
4th. As the significance of the gravel terraces which mark the lines of
outward drainage from the glaciated area cannot well be indicated in a
single paragraph, the reader is referred for further information upon
this point to the general statements respecting them throughout the next
chapter.
CHAPTER V.
ANCIENT GLACIERS IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE.
_New England._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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