208 H. p. CUSHIXG INCONFORMI'IY AT P.ASE OF BEREA GRIT 



the cut being altogether too long to he compressed into a single view. 

 The Berea is below the track level for a distance of about one hundred 

 yards and likely attains there an additional thickness of from 15 to 20 

 feet; but as the exposures stand they show a channel, probably a stream 

 channel, cut into the shales to a depth of certainly over 30 feet, probably 

 oO feet, and with a width of some one hundred yards at the level of the 

 road-bed. The greater steepness of the east side indicates that the cur- 

 rent was cutting asrainst that bank. The sandstone in the channel is verv 

 unevenly bedded and the adjacent shale is disturbed, chiefly by a bending 

 do\^'n parallel to the slopes of the channel sides. 



So far as known to me, this is the most easterly of the channels of good 

 size that has been discovered. "While by no means so large as some of 

 those farther west, it is of the same type and the excellent exposures 

 justify its lengthy description. Unfortunately today the showing is by 

 no means as good as it formerly was. The Bedford shale, especially in 

 its upper red portion, is an extraordinarily weak formation, crumbling 

 with great rapidity and becoming covered Avith vegetation in a single 

 season ; but the base of the Berea still shows as sharply as in 1908, when 

 photographed. 



Elsewhere in the Cleveland vicinity the contact shows only minor 

 irregularities. The shale surface is repeatedly channeled, but the chan- 

 nels are small and shallow, and this is the general character of the contact 

 all across northern Ohio. 



. The underlying Formations 



Beneath the Berea is a thickness of many hundreds of feet of shales. 

 Directly beneath lies the Bedford shale, with a thickness of from 75 to 

 100 feet where fully developed. For the most part it is an exceedingly 

 weak, clay shale. In the western sections, those containing the channels, 

 the formation is mostly a red shale of this type which, when freshly ex- 

 posed, breaks down to a sticky, red clay in a very few days. In the basal 

 portions are some thin, harder bands of shale and an occasional thin band 

 of sandstone. In the Cleveland district the formation carries a 20-foot 

 sandstone lentil, the Euclid bluestone, in its basal portion; l)ut I know 

 of no channel which has cut dowai to the bluestone horizon. The blue- 

 stone has an interest from the standpoint of this paper, since it shows at 

 its base irregularity of the channel type, quite like that at the base of the 

 Berea, though on a much smaller scale. In the quarry floors of some of 

 the quarries at Euclid excellent illustrations of this are shown. It is an 

 interformational irregularity and due to contemporaneous erosion, with 



