This sort of wear on the transported blocks of rock, is effected both by the bed-rock reacting on the bowlders transported over it, and by bowlders acting on one another in and under the ice. The wear of bowlders by bowlders is effected wherever adjacent ones are carried along at different rates. Since the rate of motion of the ice is different in different parts of the glacier, the mutual abrasion of transported materials is a process constantly in operation. A large proportion of the transported stone and blocks of rock may thus eventually become striated.
From the nature of the wear to which the stones are subjected when carried in the base of the ice, it is easy to understand that their shapes must be different from those of water-worn materials. The latter are rolled over and over, and thus lose all their angles and assume a more or less rounded form. The former, held more or less firmly in the ice, and pressed against the underlying rock or rock debris as they are carried slowly forward, have their faces planed and striated. The planation and striation of a stone need not be confined to its under surface. On either side or above it other stones, moving at different rates, are made to abrade it, so that its top and sides may be planed and scored. If the ice-carried stones shift their positions, as they may under various circumstances, new faces will be worn. The new face thus planed off may meet those developed at an earlier time at sharp angles, altogether unlike anything which water-wear is capable of producing. The stone thus acted upon shows a surface bounded by planes and more or less beveled, instead of a rounded surface such as water wear produces. We find, then, in the shape of the bowlders and smaller stones of the drift, and in the markings upon their surfaces, additional criteria for the identification of glacier drift (Plate [XXXVI]).
The characteristics of glacial drift, so far as concerns its constitution, may then be enumerated as, (1) its lithological, and (2) physical heterogeneity; (3) the shapes, and (4) the markings of the stones of the drift. In structure, the drift which is strictly glacial, is unstratified.
In the broadest sense of the term, all deposits made by glacier
WISCONSIN GEOL. AND NAT. HIST. SURVEY. BULLETIN NO. V., PL. XXXVI.
Glaciated stones, showing both form and striae. (Matz.)
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ice are moraines. Those made beneath the ice and back from its edge constitute the ground moraine, and are distinguished from the considerable marginal accumulations which, under certain conditions, are accumulated at or near the margin. These marginal accumulations are terminal moraines. Associated with the moraines which are the deposits of the ice directly, there are considerable bodies of stratified gravel and sand, the structure of which shows that they were laid down by water. This is to be especially noted, since lack of stratification is popularly supposed to be the especial mark of the formations to which the ice gave rise.
These deposits of stratified drift lie partly beyond the terminal moraine, and partly within it. They often sustain very complicated relations both to the ground and terminal moraines.
The drift as a whole is therefore partly stratified and partly unstratified. Structurally the two types are thoroughly distinct, but their relations are often most complex, both horizontally and vertically. A fuller consideration of these relations will be found on a later page.