Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Moraine Systems of Southwestern Ontario
At its maximum extent the front of the Wisconsin ice sheet reached nearly to Cincinnati, Ohio, and covered completely the whole province of Ontario. It is now well lnown that the movement of the ice sheet from its centres of growth in the North was due to the force of gravity acting upon a mass of ice so vast and piled up to so great a height that it had at all times a continuous surface slope descending from its centre to its edge. This surface slope was the fundamental condition of its movement. Its motion was a slow. Semi-viscous. ?owing move ment in which the ice, like water. W: s always seeking a lower level. To a certain evtent, but imperfectly, it obeyed the laws of hydrostatics. The fact that t filled the Great Lake basins, completely over?owed the highlands between them and even overtopped mountain peaks. Like the Catskills, the Adirondacks and the White mountains. Shows the enormous thickness which the ice must have had in Labrador in order to have had a descending surface slope that would pass over the tops of such moun tains as Mt. Washington in the White mountains and Mt. Marcy in the Adirondacks. On the basis of such facts it has been estimated that at its maximum the ice at its centre in Labrador must have been at least r3, ooo feet thick and may have attained a thickness of or feet. Fragments of Potsdam sandstone were carried from low levels near the north end of Lake Champlain to the tops of the Adirondacks. The possibility of the performance of such feats by the ice used to be strenuously denied. But knowing the nature of glacial movement and the enormous thickness of the ice, it is easy to see that detritus could be carried up hill to or over the top of env object - any hill or mountain over which the ice mass was moving.
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