Man and the Glacial PeriodWright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
History
Man and the Glacial Period
Wright, G. Frederick (George Frederick)
Glacial epoch; Prehistoric peoples
5. And, finally, there occur, over a wide belt bordering the so-called
moraine hills of the second Glacial epoch, extensive intercalated beds
of vegetal deposits. Among the earliest of these to be discovered were
those of Montgomery County, Ohio, where, in 1870, Professor Orton, of the
Ohio Survey, found at Germantown a deposit of peat fourteen feet thick
underneath ninety-five feet of till, and there seem also to be glacial
deposits underneath the peat as well as over it. The upper portion of the
peat contains "much undecomposed sphagnous mosses, grasses, and sedges,
and both the peat and the clayey till above it" contain many fragments
of coniferous wood which can be identified as red cedar (_Juniperus
Virginianus_). In numerous other places in that portion of Ohio
fresh-appearing logs, branches, and twigs of wood are found underneath
the till, or mingled with it, much as boulders are. Near Darrtown, in
Butler County, Ohio, red cedar logs were found under a covering of
sixty-five feet of till, and so fresh that the perfume of the wood is
apparently as strong as ever. Similar facts occur in several other
counties in the glaciated area of southern Ohio and southern Indiana.
Professor Collett reports that all over southwestern Indiana peat, muck,
rotted stumps, branches, and leaves of trees are found from sixty to one
hundred and twenty feet below the surface, and that these accumulations
sometimes occur to a thickness of from two to twenty feet.
[Illustration: Fig. 36.--Section of till near Germantown, Ohio, overlying
thick bed of peat. The man in the picture stands upon a shelf of peat
from which the till has been eroded by the stream. The dark spot at
the right hand of the picture, just above the water, is an exposure of
the peat. The thickness of the till is ninety-five feet. The partial
stratification spoken of in the text can be seen about the middle of the
picture. The furrows up and down had been made by recent rains. (United
States Geological Survey.) (Wright.)]
Farther to the northwest similar phenomena occur. Professor N. H.
Winchell has described them most particularly in Fillmore and Mower
Counties, Minnesota, from which they extend through a considerable
portion of Iowa. In the above counties of Minnesota a stratum of peat
from eighteen inches to six or eight feet in thickness, with much wood,
is pretty uniformly encountered in digging wells, the depth varying from
twenty to fifty feet. This county is near the highest divide in the State
of Minnesota, and from it "flow the sources of the streams to the north,
south, and east." The wood encountered in this stratum indicates the
prevalence f coniferous trees, and the peat mosses indicate a cool and
moist climate.
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