Notes on the Drift and Alluvium of Ohio and the West. 207 
member No. 3. They seldom have a diameter of siz inches. 
The buried timber and other relics will be noticed hereafter. 
No. 1f—This is also a compact material, of a dull yedow color, 
with fewer stony fragments or pebbles, and less calcareous and 
more aluminous matter than No. [. It is net quite as solid as the 
blue, more pervious to water, and contains more and larger pieces 
of primitive rocks. I have however seen but few granite, gneiss, 
or gneissoid fragments, with a diameter of one foot; although I 
have seen quartz and quartzose boulders of a greater size. The 
clays of the country, used for bricks, are principally of this bed. 
It occupies much more of the surface than the blue, but less 
than No. 3; forming a hard, stiff soil, adapted for grass. The 
flat regions and savannas of the northwest quarter of the state, are 
caused by the surface presence of this bed. 
No. Il1.—What I have designated as the “sand and gravel 
drift,” exhibits little regularity of stratification. It is composed 
of inferior patches of coarse sand and gravel, intermingled at all 
inclinations, evidently the result of long continued and vigorous 
action of water in rapid motion. The gravel is coarse, but mue 
worn, rounded and smooth, like the gravel beds of rapid streams. 
The portion of earthy matter is about one half, of a reddish and 
yellowish color, showing the presence of oxyd of iron, and con- 
taining various proportions of sand and clay. Almost every rock 
in the northern part of America is represented in the gravel ; but 
the greatest part by far is from the underlying and adjacent strata, 
There are pebbles of quartz, trap, granite, gneiss, conglomerate, 
limestones of all ages, iron ore, slate, coal and sandstone. In this 
there has been found timber but very rarely. 
No. IV. The “ valley drift.” —In external appearance, the grav- 
elly deposits of the valleys of the principal streams, resemble 
the member, No. 3, just noticed; but they evidently belong to a 
subsequent period, to the era of the retiring of the waters. It is 
More gravelly, and less earthy, and the gravel is more of local ori- 
gin. For instance, in the valley of the Great Miami, especially 
in the lower part, as in Whitewater township, Hamilton county, 
hio, there is a thickness of about eighty feet of pebbles, almost 
all from the limestone of the region. And it is much the same 
In the valley of the Scioto, which passes on and along the east- 
ern edge of the cliff limestone. On the Muskingum, a stream 
entirely within the coal series, there is a variety in the pebbles, 
corresponding to the rocks of that series. dicta 
_ Beds of sand are less common in this, than in No. 3; and espe- 
cially at the edges where it overlies, or abuts on the older drift, 
is much mixture and confusion. 
It rises seldom more than fifty feet above the present level of 
Streams, unless at or near their mouths, or along the Ohio, 
where it j ti hundred feet thick. The gravel of the 
BAB CAESS 
