TILL PLAINS. The surface of the drift, where left in its initial
state, also displays clear proof of its glacial origin. Over large
areas it is spread in level plains of till, perhaps bowlder-
dotted, similar to the plains of stony clay left in Spitzbergen by
the recent retreat of some of the glaciers of that island. In
places the unstratified drift is heaped in hills of various kinds,
which we will now describe.
DRUMLINS. Drumlins are smooth, rounded hills composed of till,
elliptical in base, and having their longer axes parallel to the
movement of the ice as shown by glacial scorings. They crowd
certain districts in central New York and in southern Wisconsin,
where they may be counted by the thousands. Among the numerous
drumlins about Boston is historic Bunker Hill.
Drumlins are made of ground moraine. They were accumulated and
given shape beneath the overriding ice, much as are sand bars in a
river, or in some instances were carved, like roches moutonnees,
by an ice sheet out of the till left by an earlier ice invasion.
TERMINAL MORAINES. The glaciated area is crossed by belts of
thickened drift, often a mile or two, and sometimes even ten miles
and more, in breadth, which lie transverse to the movement of the
ice and clearly are the terminal moraines of ancient ice sheets,
marking either the limit of their farthest advance or pauses in
their general retreat.
The surface of these moraines is a jumble of elevations and
depressions, which vary from low, gentle swells and shallow sags
to sharp hills, a hundred feet or so in height, and deep, steep-
sided hollows. Such tumultuous hills and hummocks, set with
depressions of all shapes, which usually are without outlet and
are often occupied by marshes, ponds, and lakes, surely cannot be
the work of running water. The hills are heaps of drift, lodged
beneath the ice edge or piled along its front. The basins were
left among the tangle of morainic knolls and ridges as the margin
of the ice moved back and forth. Some bowl-shaped basins were made
by the melting of a mass of ice left behind by the retreating
glacier and buried in its debris.
THE STRATIFIED DRIFT. Like modern glaciers the ice sheets of the
Pleistocene were ever being converted into water about their
margins. Their limits on the land were the lines where their
onward flow was just balanced by melting and evaporation. On the
surface of the ice along the marginal zone, rivulets no doubt
flowed in summer, and found their way through crevasses to the
interior of the glacier or to the ground. Subglacial streams, like
those of the Malaspina glacier, issued from tunnels in the ice,
and water ran along the melting ice front as it is seen to do
about the glacier tongues of Greenland. All these glacier waters
flowed away down the chief drainage channels in swollen rivers
loaded with glacial waste.
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