VERMILION COUNTY. 243 



they form extensive bluffs, in some cases one hundred feet high. Two mem- 

 bers are here represented ; the upper consisting principally of heavy beds of 

 sand and coarse gravel, with occasional thin layers of clay, which, where near 

 the surface, have been discolored by the oxydation of the small portion of iron 

 which they contain, and appear as yellowish and reddish-brown beds, but, at. 

 greater depths, still retain the original blue tint which is the prevailing color 

 of the lower members. 



In connection with these upper beds of the Drift, and also with the Loess, 

 we find, scattered over the surface of the county, many large masses of lime- 

 stone and occasionally sandstone. In several cases, these are so large and so 

 deeply imbedded as to have induced the belief that they were the outcropping 

 edges of solid beds of rock. Some of these masses are composed of a beauti- 

 ful, light, fawn colored limestone, of a homogenous, fine grained texture, and 

 destitute of fossils, so far as noticed. Kilns of lime have been burned, from 

 rock of this character, one or two miles north of Rossville, and also about one 

 mile south of Mann's chapel, in section 36, town 22 north, range 12 west. One 

 mile south of this latter locality, and also at about the same* distance to 

 the northwest, there were observed several large masses of a dark, semi-crystal- 

 line, bituminous limestone, with a few fossils. The rock is supposed to be Si- 

 lurian. Smaller fragments of the light colored rock are not unfrequent to the 

 southward, even as far as Terre Haute. The general appearance of the stone 

 would indicate that it belongs to the Coal Measures, but no outcrop of an ex- 

 actly similar rock is known, so that its origin is uncertain. In the western 

 part of this county, and in the adjoining part of Champaign, there are numer- 

 ous scattered masses of a light drab, semi-crystalline or fragmentary to massive, 

 sometimes shaly, limestone, highly fossiliferous, which belong to the bed marked 

 No. 1, in the general section of the rocks of the county, and indicate its former 

 extension toward the north and west. Many of the other rocks of the county 

 are also locally distributed in connection with these upper beds of the Drift, a s 

 at Danville, where, in the banks of gravel stripped from over the coal, we find 

 very numerous thin slabs of a compact, fragmentary to semi-crystalline lime- 

 stone, containing numerous fragments of fish teeth No. 21 of the general 

 section which, at Rock ford of Salt fork, lies ninety-five feet above the Dan- 

 ville coal. These beds, also, not unfrequently contain fragments of coal and 

 shale, which have led many persons to suppose that coal was necessarily close 

 at hand. But they also contain lumps of native copper transported from Lake 

 Superior, and bits of lead ore from the Galena region ; and it is by no means 

 certain that the coal of the same beds has all been taken up from the immedi- 

 ate neighborhood where it is found. These masses of coal and shale are abun- 

 dant in these beds, as far as Lake Michigan at least, and it is still an open 

 question whether they have been swept down from the Michigan coal fields, or 



