Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univ).pdf/110
terraces 130, 150, or even 180 feet above tide-water. These clays are the result of a late glacial or postglacial submergence of the valley, but their upper surface does not indicate the amount of their submergence, as they are bottom deposits. Delta deposits made by the tributary streams, where they entered the Hudson estuary, would indicate the amount of submergence.
Such deposits are found on the Catskill a mile north of Cairo, and eroded remnants are traceable for three or four miles down stream. The surface is characterized by great numbers of water-worn stones up to fifteen or eighteen inches in diameter. The lobate margin, where present, is poorly defined. These deposits range from 290 feet (aneroid) above tide, up river, to 270 feet further down. One-tenth of a cubic mile of material seems to have been washed into the Catskill trench at the point of this delta between the time of the ice departure and the elevation of the land. Subsequent terracing has removed half that amount.
The course of the Catskill at Leeds, where it crosses a ledge of hard Corniferous limestone is probably of postglacial superimposed origin, but the preglacial valley cannot be definitely fixed.
H. B. K.
This report covers an area of 5950 miles, two-thirds in Alabama. Topographically it falls into three divisions: 1) the Cumberland and other plateaus of the northwest; 2) in the center, anticlinal valleys—Browns and Wills, with the synclinal mountains—Sand and Lookout; 3) the monoclinal mountains, the "flatwoods" (Coosa shales) and the chert hills (Knox limestone) of the southeast. The drainage of the first is radial from the center of the plateau to the Tennessee; that of the second, once consequent upon the folded structure, is now adjusted to the strike of the soft beds.
The formations are Cambrian, Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous. Total thickness is from 13,000 to 18,000 feet in the east, but decreases westward. Hard sandstones of the Carboniferous form the cappings of the plateaus and synclinal mountains. In the anticlinal and monoclinal valleys the Silurian and Cambrian appear. The rocks pass from the nearly horizontal beds of the plateau region, by narrow unsymmetrical anticlines with steeper dip on the northwest side, and by broad shallow synclines, to the complicated folds of the southeast. The axes of these latter folds dip more or less abruptly northward and southward, causing the ridges to assume zigzag courses. Synclines are often crossed by anticlines.
Thrust faults exist, some of great magnitude, and traceable for 200 to 300 miles. By the "Rome thrust fault" the Cambrian shales have been shoved four or five miles over upon the Carboniferous shales. Most of the over-