32 HISTORY OF OHIO. 



bamboo; the leaves, large, full, fresh, uninjured and entire, of 

 cocoa-nut-bearing palm; the impressions of the tea leaf, of the 

 cassia plant; of ferns, a great many; of the leaves and flowers 

 of the bread-fruit tree, fully expanded, fresh and entire, and 

 perfectly uninjured, in appearance, as if they were in full 

 bloom. The bark, also, of the bread-fruil tree, much flattened 

 and compressed, we discovered in shale. Our Ohio fossil date 

 tree, is large, and has wide spreading branches. Such an one, 

 exists on the north side of the bed lying in the bed of the Mox- 

 ahala creek, not for below the stage road, nine miles, west of 

 Zanesville, on the road to Lancaster, Ohio. The sand- 

 stone, in which these tropical plants are imbedded, contains 

 considerable mica, and, resembles exactly, the sandstone, in 

 which Mens. Brogniart found tropical plants, in France. The 

 iron-stone, at Zanesville, is sometimes composed almost wholly 

 of the roots, trunks and leaves of the bamboo. The sandstone 

 contains the same tree and its parts. Small trees are often 

 much flattened by pressure. The shale sometimes, contains 

 barks of trees, between diff'erent layers of shale ; the bark is now 

 fossil coal; and these layers, alternate with each other, shale 

 and coal. 



Fishes, are said to have been found, though we saw but one 

 fish, found at Zanesville, and that one was a pike. Fossil 

 fishes are more frequently found, in sandstone, and we had 

 one, several years, in our possession, it was a red horse, a 

 species of perch, still living in our waters. That fish, perfect 

 and entire, fell out of a mass of sandstone, which was split with 

 wedges, by some stone masons, who were building a wall of a 

 cellar, at Burlington, on the Ohio river. It was a year since, 

 in Letton's museum, at Cincinnati. The shells of oysters, 

 sometimes, unchanged, are found, in beds of sand, an ancient 

 diluvian deposite, at Cincinnati. J. Dorfeuille's museum con- 

 tains these shells. A few remarks, on the tropical plants, at 

 Zanesville, seem to be called for before we leave this town and 

 its environs. At this day, the bamboo, cassia, bread-fruit tree, 

 cocoa-nut-bearing palm, &c. &c. are considered as tropical 

 plants, and grow only in such a climate, or in one, that is not 



