Abstract
THIS is the first number of an “Educational Series” to be published by the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. The region to which attention is now particularly called is in the south-central part of Wisconsin, and it is of interest because it well illustrates many points in the geographical evolution of land-surfaces. It comprises an undulating plain chiefly of Potsdam Sandstone, with some areas of magnesian limestone, and with a northern and southern range of bold quartzite hills. The southern range rises from 500 to 800 feet above the surrounding land, or up to 1600 feet above sea-level, and in the bottom of a deep gap, which divides this range, lies Devil's Lake. This is a lake which, in glacial times, occupied an enclosure between the ice on the one hand and the quartzite ridge on the other: a gorge which originally was the work of a pre-Cambrian stream. The melting of the ice supplied abundant water, and the lake rose perhaps 90 feet above its present level. In this and in many other cases the irregular deposition of glacial drift gave rise to many depressions without outlets, in which surface-waters collected after the ice had disappeared. Few of these lakes now remain in the region, but Devil's Lake, which is more than a mile in length and half a mile wide, occupies an unfilled portion of an old river valley, isolated by great morainic dams from its surface-continuations on either hand. Streams originate beyond these dams. The “Dalles” are sandstone cliffs which form a gorge along the Wisconsin River for a length of about seven miles, and a depth of 50 to 100 feet. The effects of weathering by atmospheric agents, and of erosion by the river, are well exhibited, and the views remind us of the rock-scenery along the Eden near Corby Castle.
The Geography of the Region about Devil's Lake and the Dalles of the Wisconsin.
By Prof. R. D. Salisbury Mr. W. W. Atwood. Pp. x + 151. (Madison, Wisconsin: Geological and Natural History Survey, 1900.)
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The Geography of the Region about Devil's Lake and the Dalles of the Wisconsin . Nature 62, 172 (1900). https://doi.org/10.1038/062172b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/062172b0