232 APPENDIX. 
Il. 
ON THE AGE OF THE BISON IN THE OHIO VALLEY. 
BY N. S. SHALER. 
In the foregoing Memoir of Mr. Allen, allusion is made to certain re- 
searches carried on by me at Big Bone Lick in Kentucky, which have some 
reference to the question of the age of the Buffalo in the Ohio Valley. 
These investigations, begun in 1868 and continued in 1869, have only been 
sufficient to point the way to further studies which it is in the plan of the 
Kentucky Geological Survey to prosecute, but which it may not be in its 
power to undertake for some time to come. I therefore give a short sketch 
of the evidence collected at Big Bone Lick with a view to showing the limits 
of the observations that have been made there. 
The springs at Big Bone Lick, as at all the other licks of Kentucky, are 
sources of saline waters derived from the older Paleozoic rocks. These 
saline materials, as has been suggested by Dr. Sterry Hunt, have their origin 
in the imprisoned waters of the ancient seas, or in the salts derived there- 
from, which have been locked in the depths of the strata below the reach 
of the leaching action of the surface water. Whenever the rocks lie above 
the line of the drainage, these salts have been leached away. As we go 
below the surface they increase in quantity until we reach the level, where 
these waters remain saturated with the materials which existed in the old 
sea-waters. The displacement of these old imprisoned waters is brought 
about by the sinking down of water on the highlands through the vertical 
interstices of the soil and rock, and the consequent tendency of the water 
below the surface to restore the hydrostatic balance. This action is particularly 
likely to occur when the rocks above the drainage are limestones or shales ; 
while a bed of rock at some distance below the drainage is of sandstone and 
permeable to water. This is the case at Big Bone Lick, where at about two 
hundred feet below the surface we have the calciferous sandstone with a struc- 
ture open enough to admit the free passage of water in a horizontal direc- 
tion. That some such process is at work is shown by the fact that the water 
will rise ten feet or more above the surface of the soil if enclosed in a pipe. 
