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232 



APPENDIX 



II. 



ON THE AGE 



THE BISON IN THE OHIO VALLEY 



BY N. S. SHALER. 



■I I 



In the foregoing Memoir of Mi 



ion 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 surfice 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. 



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