68 WA VERL Y GRO UP. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



\VAVERLY GROUP 



141. THIS Group was named in 1838, by Mr. C. Briggs, an assistant geolo- 

 gist on the Ohio Survey, from Waverly, Ohio, where it consists of a fine-grained 

 sandstone, about 300 feet in thickness, superimposed upon a black argillaceous slate 

 200 or 300 feet thick, and is followed by from 40 to 80 feet of conglomerate. He iden- 

 tified the rocks at Portsmouth, Piketown, and Chillicothe. Mr. J. W. Foster, an- 

 other assistant, followed them through Licking and Fairfield Counties. In 1839 

 David Dale Owen, after having examined the rocks in Ohio, found them in Indi- 

 ana, Illinois, and Kentucky, and described the freestone knobs displayed back of 

 New Albany as the Waverly Sandstone series, and referred them to the base of 

 his Subcarboniferous System. Owen established this Group as a geological sub- 

 division by a fair definition. Owen, Norwood, Pratten, and other Western geolo- 

 gists recognized the Group from that time forward. In 1841 Hubbard recognized 

 the Group in the geological survey of Michigan. Hall and some Eastern geologists 

 erroneously asserted the rocks were of Devonian age. In 1861, Meek and Wortheu, 

 having ascertained, upon palseontological evidence, the limestones at Rockford, 

 Indiana, at Choteau, Missouri, and at Kinderhook, in Pike County, Illinois, be- 

 long to the base of the Subcarboniferous rocks, proposed to call them the Kinder- 

 hook Group. They understood they were making a synonym, but supposed they 

 were including less in their Group than is included in the Waverly. In the same 

 year Alexander Winchell described the Marshall Group of Michigan, and afterward 

 thoroughly defined it, and proved its identity with the Waverly Group, the Kin- 

 derhook, the Yellow sandstone series of Iowa, and Choteau limestone, Vermicular 

 sandstone and shale, and Lithographic limestone of Missouri. 



142. The Group in Ohio forms a belt from 10 to 20 miles in width, com- 

 mencing near the mouth of the Scioto, and bearing north and north-east toward 

 Cleveland, but widening as it approaches Lake Erie, until its width exceeds 40 

 miles. It rests upon the Portage Group, and has been called in its northern ex- 

 tension the Cuyahoga shale, Berea Grit, Bedford and Cleveland Shales. It crosses 

 the Ohio from the Scioto, and entering Kentucky is soon broken up among the 

 mountain ranges. In Indiana it forms a belt extending from New Albany north, 

 by way of Rockford, and south across the Ohio River, by way of Danville and 

 Knob Lick, Kentucky. The fossiliferous, greenish, mottled limestone at Rockford, 

 so famous for its Goniatites is at the base of the Group. The maximum thickness 

 in Indiana is 500 feet, in Kentucky 200 feet. In Michigan, at Marshall, Hills- 

 dale, and other places, it consists of reddish, yellowish, and greenish sandstones, 

 having a thickness of 160 feet, and the Napoleon sandstone, 123 feet in thickness. 

 It furnishes large quantities of salt and gypsum. The brine is obtained by boring 

 and pumping, and very large salt-works are established on the Lower Saginaw River. 

 Salt has been largely manufactured from brine obtained from the rocks in Ohio. The 

 celebrated Ohio freestone, so much used for building purposes, is from this Group. 



143. In Missouri, the Lithographic limestone has a thickness of 55 feet; is 

 a fine-grained, compact limestone, breaking with a free, conchoidal fracture, and is 



