Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1885-08-07

A0 AhoSi1lStS> nv OOl11DSS
or monuments. A few very small flat |
stones covered with Hebrew charac-
tiers mark the resting places of genera
lions OF oppressed Jews. The grave
yard remains indebted, for it is hidden
by grass and weeds. The Christians Of
Shlraz iately placed a high wall round
their burial ground, which is adjacent. |
Inc natural result in a Mohammedan
country followed; the graves were des-
ecrated and the tombstones displaced
ana broken.-COr. st. James Gazette.
THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY.
"A flcture of Our Continent just Before the
Advent of Human Life.
The coming years work of the Geo
logical Survey has been mapped out
by Major Powell, and the plans have
received the approval of Secretary
Lamar.
The work of the map makers, while
serving the many important ends,
State and municipal, of the most exact
geographical surveys upon a large
scale, is, so far as the Government is
concerned, merely designed to lay
the necessary foundation for the
studies of the savants of the institution.
The early functions of the Geological
Survey, and of the organizations which
a few years ago We're merged into it,
Vwere limited to the Survey and
ktudy Of the public domain, and of the
NIX hundred thousand square miles
4about one-fifth of the ares of the
hion-already covered by the sur
vAors and biologists, five hundred
thousand lie west of the one hun
dredh meridian. This region has
proved q rare school of science, the
physical conditions having been such
as to preserve unchanged the earliest
rock forms, so that the history of the
globe ia: back toward its genesis may
be read from the mountain sides as
from an open book. When the study
was begun there was nothing in geo.
logical literature to show that similarly
favorable regions existed elsewhere,
and it was for a time believed that our
plateau districts were in many respects
unique. It is now known, however,
that portions of Abyssinia, Of northern
Spain, of China and of the Great
Sahara, p1esent like conditions, both as
to the formations and their state Of
preservation.
The picture in outline of the young
continenti quarternary time, just be-
fore the advent Of human life, into
which, as n of a series, these scien-
tific men are now painting the details,
has but few familiar features. The
great mountain systems were already
uplifted, and were vastly more rugged
and higher than now. The Southern
Sea, now the Gulf of Mexico, had pos
session Of an immense strip of the lower
country and Of the great valley and
tho Atlantic Coast. The Pacific Slope
was a rfgion of steep glaciers. The
Great BSsin was an inland ocean, or,
rather, two great inland seas were
found within it, of one of which the
Great Salt Lake is a petty remnant.
This region and that to the south, now
so sterile and dry, was then one of great
humidity, and, where not covered with
water, was very fertile. An ice sheet
I extended over the northern portion of
the eastern and middle country, owe
ing the great lakes and the bordering
regions to the south for hundreds OF
miles. Continually moving southwark,
this sheet deposited its cargoes of det-
fitus century after century, forming
the subsoils of what are now the East
ern, Middle and Northwestern States;
and heaped up a terminal moraine, still
distinctly traceable as a range of hills
through New Jersey, Pennsylvania,
Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, and thence north
westward along the present line of the
Missouri through Dakota, and up into
1.-The British possessions. Great tongues
of ice shot off from this sheet far to the
, southwark, while an island region,
comprising much of the present State
of Wisconsin, remained bare. There
were. in fact, two great ice periods,
| with an intervening season longer than
the time which has elapsed since the
disappearance of the last sheet, and
during the interval forests of large
, conifers covered the face of the earth,
Long Island, which was covered by
: glacial deposits, marks the southeastern
! limit of the sheet.
The climatic conditions of the coun'
try south Of the great ice belt were
much the same as at present, and the
flora was similar, though coniferous
: growths were proportionately much
: more abundant. Through the forests
along the borders of the ice shee'
roamed strange animals, among which
5 were the huge, hairy and more thar
I; e%lephantic mammoth; the horse, {
/; smaller animal than his relative of to
e 2 day, having w%ell-formed hoofs, bu'
! still bearing in rudimentary form ont
l or two of the toes Of his primeval an
3 cestors; the great buffalo, two or three
I times larger than his descendant of to
day; the pig, more nearly resembling
the peccary OF South America than tn
familiar hog of u W country, ant
t other creatures curiously related to thu
+ modern camel and rhinoceros. Their
came man, but his early footprints ar
too few and indistinct to reveal with,
y a few thousand years just when h
e came, while whence and how he cam
I few venture even to guess Washing
ton Cor. N. Y. San.
The Antelope of New Mexico.
Even in his most graceful movement