234 The Ohio Naturalist. [Vol. VIII, No. 3, 



Bearing on A rchaeology. There has been a tendency in the past 

 to explain formations of the esker type as the work of Indians or 

 Mound Builders/" an eri'or not without justification. Evidence 

 of design in the Dayton ridges is patent to the unitiated. They 

 suggest an immense fortification composed of lines of earth- 

 works; the knolls serving as lookout and signal stations, gaps for 

 ingress and egress, and short connecting embankments as road- 

 ways from ridge to ridge. Several references are made in local 

 histories" to the work of Mound Builders found in what is now 

 Calvary Cemetery (C. C, Fig. 1). Of these the following quo- 

 tation is the most comprehensive: — "South of Dayton on a hill 

 one hundred and sixty feet high is a fort enclosing twenty-fpur 

 acres. The gateway on the south is covered in the interior by a 

 ditch twenty feet wide and seven hundred feet long. On the 

 northern line of embankment is a small mound from the top of 

 which a full view of the country for a long distance up and down 

 the river may be obtained."^- Other isolated portions are ex- 

 plained similarh' by residents. 



Such explanations are to be doubted as few if any more than 

 the number of Indian relics normal to this section of Ohio are 

 found. Even admitting the archaeologic suppositions, the 

 accredited Indian work constitutes so little of the region studied,, 

 with but trifling interference to the general plan, that it may be 

 disregarded. That no large portion can be of human construc- 

 tion is apparent not alone from the size of the formation, but 

 from the evidence of assorted material in numerous cuts. 



Topographic Relations. Eskers differ in their relations to the 

 topography of the area on which they rest, but according to 

 Chamberlin and Salisbury they were probably most frequently 

 made by streams flowing about "parallel to the direction of the 

 ice movement. "^^ The same writers also suppose the most 

 favorable position for their formation to be "near the edge of 

 the ice during the time of its maximum extension or retreat."" 



It is possible that the topography of the Dayton area oft'ers 

 the best explanation, on a sub-glacial hypothesis, for the origin 

 of these local eskers. Dayton lies in a large valley (Fig. 1) 

 formed by the junction of the Stillwater and Mad Rivers and 

 Wolf Creek with the Great Miami River. The enclosing rock- 

 bearing hills rise about 200 feet above the flood plain. The basin 

 is filled with a varying depth of debris exceeding in places 200 

 feet.*^ The maximum width of the valley is about six miles. To 

 the southward beyond the junctions the valley narrows to about 



10. G. H. Stone, loc. cit., p. 35. 



11. History of MontRomery County, Ohio, (1882), p. 216. 



12. Quotation in "History of Davton," (1889), p. 10, from J. P. McLean's woik. 



"The Mound Builders." 



13. loc. cit., p. 37(3. 



14. Ibid, p. 374. 



15. F. Leverett, loc. cit., p. 361. 



