Age of the PI. Pleasant Beds. 97 



are also exceptionally heavy, attaining a tliickncsN ol sixteen 

 or eighteen inches, and are often so free from fossils as to af- 

 ford no indication of the kinds of life from which they were 

 derived. "='■ It was this series that was subsequently referred 

 to the Trenton horizon by S. A. Miller, of Cincinnati, and Prof. 

 Orton, the State Geologist of Ohio ; and it was also visited and 

 studied by the writer of this last year, under the auspices of 

 the United States Geological Survey. It will be interesting 

 to refer still further to the literature l)efore detailing the re- 

 sults of my own examination. 



• The first volume of the Geology of Ohio, cited above, was 

 severely critised by Mr. S. A. Miller, in a paper read before 

 the Cincinnati Society of Natural History in August, and pub- 

 lished in the Ciiicin)iati Enquirer of August 7, 1873. The 

 author states that he had examined the rocks at Point Pleas- 

 ant, and all the exposures on the river as far as Cincinnati ; and 

 that there were neither lithological nor paleontological char- 

 acters to distinguish this series from that exposed at Cincin- 

 nati. He advocated discarding Prof. Orton's designation, con- 

 sidering it " wholly unwarranted," and a " drag upon the sci- 

 ence." He thought the rocks represented a lower horizon 

 than those of Cincinnati, but did not consider them any more 

 worthy of a special name than "every exposure at each sepa- 

 ate hill throughout the blue limestone region." He also crit- 

 icised the division into River Quarry Beds, Eden S/ta/es and 

 Hill Quarry Beds, believing there were no facts to warrant 

 anj' such division. Throughout the article, neither the names 

 Hud.son River nor Trenton, as applied to any of the Ohio 

 rocks, appear. 



This opinion was materially modified about six years later 

 in a report of a committee of which Mr. Miller was Chairman. f 



The committee was appointed to report upon some system 

 of nomenclature for the Cincinnati rocks, and they referred 

 the strata to the Utica and Hudson River Groups, stating also 

 that probably the Trenton is represented in the banks of the 

 Ohio River, " a few miles east of the city." This refers 

 doubtless to the rocks at Point Pleasant. It is a return to the 



-Ibid, pages 373-.i;4- 



tjour. Cin. Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. i, 1S79, pages 193-194. 



