Notes on the Drift and Alluvium of Ohio and the West, 215 
charred by fire. The timber strattm extends under the town of 
Portsmouth, and appears on the Scioto side. On the same ground, 
before the occupation of white people, there were the remains of 
an ancient city, belonging to the “race of the mounds.” 
At Cincinnati, in a well near the corner of Fourth and Vine 
streets, Judge Burnet, who was then the proprietor, struck at the 
depth of ninety-three feet, a partially decayed stump, with the 
roots attached, standing in an upright position. The well was 
sunk through the water-washed sand and gravel, to the level of low 
water; and here as at Portsmouth, were directly over the timber, 
the walls, ditches and parapets of an ancient and unknown people. 
I have already stated that leaves and twigs were sometimes 
seen in the blue marl of Lake Erie, and in the coarse sand and 
gravel above it. 
Animal Remains.—In the tertiary strata of the Atlantic coast, 
of the St. Lawrence, Lake Champlain and the Hudson, of South 
Carolina and the lower Mississippi, the bones and grinders of the 
Mastodon, elephant, horse, Mylodon, Megatherium, &c., are reck- 
oned as fossils of beds that in many respects appear to be equiv- 
alents of the hard pans of Ohio. The bones of the mastodon, 
elephant, beaver, horse and bison, have also been found at the 
drift and swamp mud.* It was the same with a tusk found on 
the Ohio Canal near Massillon. Those mentioned by Mr. Lyell 
at Cincinnati, were in the “valley drift,’ and at the Big Bone 
Lick, Kentucky ;—the bone bed is a sulphurous bog, below high 
water of the Ohio, and covered in places by river alluvium, — 
At the great collection of bones on the Osage, In Benton Co., 
Missouri, there appears from the descriptions to be a bed of re- 
cent bog or mire. In Deerfield township, Ross Co., Ohio, where 
some teeth and bones have been seen, they are in the alluvium of 
a brook. 'The bones and teeth of the horse found at Columbus, 
Ohio, are in the fissures or “clay seams” of the cliff limestone. 
The elephant skeleton disinterred by Mr. Briggs, in Salt River, 
Jefferson Co., Ohio, in 1838, presents a case nearer than any other 
* See Ohio Report, 1838, p. 80. 
