THE SUNBURY SHALE OF OHIO 273 
the locality in central Ohio, which has furnished its name, and 
then describe some of the more important outcrops from there 
south to northern Kentucky. Returning to Sunbury, its out- 
crop willthen be traced to the north and east nearly to the 
Pennsylvania line. 
The Sunbury shale was named by Professor Hicks in 1878, 
from exposures on Rattlesnake Creek, on the present farm of 
Amasa Whitney, about two miles east of Sunbury, Delaware 
county.’ If an opportunity remained to select a place for the 
name of the formation, a much more conspicuous outcrop might 
be found, but as this has been regularly defined and published it 
is the writer’s opinion that Sunbury shale should be accepted. 
Professor Hicks described the formation as ‘‘a black, bitumi- 
nous shale containing shells of Lémgula and Discina and spines, 
scales, and teeth of fishes. But one outcrop of it is known in 
Delaware county, and that was revealed only by a systematic 
search of a day and a half.’”’* Some three and one-half feet of 
this shale is shown on the northern bank of Rattlesnake Creek a 
short distance north of the house of Amasa Whitney. As 
exposed it is black and argillaceous, rather rotten from weather- 
ing, greatly iron-stained between the layers with some lighter 
colored blotches, and contains iron pyrites. Below this outcrop, 
at irregular intervals, there are several exposures of the shale on 
the bank of the creek, and in aloose piece a specimen of a fairly 
large Lingula was found, which was the only fossil secured at this 
locality. The lower part of the’shale, however, in which fossils 
are generally the most abundant, is not shown here, and the top 
of the Berea grit forms the bed of the creek a little below the 
house of Mr. W. P. Swallow. The upper layer of the Berea is 
greatly iron-stained, contains considerable iron pyrites, and has 
quite an irregular surface. 
A little further down the stream is an outcrop on the south- 
ern bank where between two and three feet of thin bedded sand- 
*Am. Jour. Sci., 3A ser., Vol. XVI, pp. 216, 219, 220. Also see p. 71 for a further 
account of the locality. 
2 [bid., pp. 219, 220. 
