390 Frank Carney 



continue. The fonner j-ivei- e()urse.s here indicated are supposed, 

 in the mail;, to have antedated the course of the Ohio river along 

 tlie southern pai-t of the state. Segments of these former stream 

 valleys were united in forming the Ohio. 



The central and western parts of the state, omitting the lake 

 ])lain area, appeal- to have been drained by two important streams, 

 each having a large basin and many tributai'ies, which united in 

 or near Mercer county, flowing thence into Indiana. The course 

 of the westernmost of these streams, in parts of Warren and 

 Green counties, is indicated by the Little Miami; it passes thence 

 across the southwest corner of Clarke county, and bears north- 

 westward through Tro3> and Piqua into Shelby county. 



The drainage history in the southwest corner of the state has 

 been variously interpreted by different workers. One recon- 

 struction gives two streams, rising in Kentucky, flowing north- 

 ward, uniting near Hamilton into one stream which followed 

 the course now indicated by the Great Miami through Dayton, 

 northeast of which, in Clarke county, it joined the buried channel 

 just described; the Licking river is one of the streams; its old 

 course and present course are identical north to the Ohio, and 

 Mill ci'e(^k valley is its abandoned course northward from Cin- 

 cinnati ; the other stream flowed northward to Hamilton through 

 the Great Miami valley. Another reconstruction assumes that 

 the old Licking river turned to the southwest at Hamilton and 

 made the vallev which the Great Miami occupies in its course to 

 the Ohio. 



The central \yc\vi of the state is today drained southward by 

 the Scioto. The former river in this area, it is supposed, flowed 

 to the north, its several tributaries rising in Kentucky and West 

 Virginia. One of these branchc^s, the Marietta river, had its 

 headwaters in the vicinity of Parkersburg; for a few miles, the 

 Ohio now follows its valley; thence this stream crossed Meigs 

 county, and the northern ])art of Mason county, Ky., and con- 

 tinued westward through Ciallia and Jackson counties, Ohio, 

 uniting with another stream from the south, the old Kanawha, - 

 in the vicinity of Beaver, Pike county. N(vir Piketon, the Kana- 

 wha joined the old Portsmouth river which also had its origin in 



2 Tight names this, Toays river. Profvsi^ional Paper IS, plate xvii, U. S. Geol. 

 Survey, 1903. 



