Page:The Journal of geology (IA journalofgeology11893univers).pdf/200
stream has only partially removed this partial filling of the trench previously cut. The estimated amount of the material so removed since the time of the formation of the kettle moraine is one square mile 650 feet deep, or 13/22 as much as the rock excavation. From this it appeared that the amount of erosion in all post-glacial time (including the last of the glacial period), although wrought upon incoherent gravels, is much less than the amount of rock cutting accomplished between the time the river was diverted and the formation of the kettle moraine.
In the introduction to his paper Professor G. Frederick Wright stated that the hypothesis of an ice dam at Cincinnati appeared to be in a damaged condition, as an agency to account for the high terraces of the upper Ohio and some of its tributaries, and that it was a part of the purpose of the paper to repair the damage. It proved in the sequel, however, an effort at emendation by substitution. The additional facts bearing upon the unity of the glacial period cited in the paper related chiefly to a considerable depth of glacial wash in the trench of a tributary of the Beaver River near Homewood, Pa., just outside but near the border of the glaciated region. Professor Wright contended that the trough in which this glacial material lies must have been eroded previous to its deposition. This erosion he referred to pre-glacial times. The filling reaches nearly or quite to the upper terrace plain on the north side of the tributary, but does not appear on the terrace plain south of the tributary. In the course of his paper, and notably in the discussion following, Professor Wright advanced the hypothesis that the rock shelves which constitute the base of the high terraces of the upper Ohio, Allegheny and adjacent rivers, were formed during a stage of base-levelling in Tertiary times, that the narrower and deeper valley below the rock shelves (in round numbers 300 feet deep) was cut in this base-plane during a stage of elevation just preceding the glacial period, and that this trench was filled up with glacial wash and glacio-natant material to a height, at some points, as much as sixty feet above the rock shelves. In the discussion it was pointed out that, to