268 JESSE E. HYDE 



by erosion, prior to the formation of the next succeeding Sunbury 

 shale, and their suggestion cannot lightly be laid aside. These 

 facts are: (i) the presence of a fauna which is found only in the 

 lowermost two or three feet of the Bedford at Gahanna (Franklin 

 County), Bainbridge (Ross County), and Piketon (Pike County), 

 the only localities in central and southern Ohio where the contact 

 has been observed. In Kentucky a portion of the same fauna 

 is found when only a fraction of a foot is present. (2) At one 

 point, Olympian Springs, Bath County, Morse and Foerste note 

 the following variation in thickness of the "Bedford-Berea," 

 within two and one-half miles: 12^ feet, 5f feet, 2 inches. This 

 is an extreme case but irregularity in thickness is the rule in the 

 sections they present. (3) The absence of beds corresponding 

 to the Berea as soon as the thickness is reduced to less than 70 

 feet. (It is not apparent that the 7^-foot bed they refer to the 

 Berea in the Elk Lick section, where the total is reduced to 70 

 feet, is really Berea and not a horizon in the Bedford. Many such 

 occur in the Bedford to the northward.) 



It is thus uncertain, and perhaps unknowable except by infer- 

 ence, what the true conditions in Bedford and Berea time were 

 to the southwestward. If, as seems probable to the writer, only 

 the basal beds are present, they are not indicative, for the basal 

 beds throughout southern Ohio are largely shale. 



It seems probable that the northwest-southeast axis in Ken- 

 tucky, which was prominent enough during late Bedford and Berea 

 time to control the ripple directions, was elevated at the close 

 of that period so far as to permit the removal of almost the whole 

 of these deposits. Possibly this uplift did not succeed the forma- 

 tion of the Berea of southern Ohio, but was contemporaneous 

 with it, and the extension of the Berea (so called) over southern 

 Ohio was due to the northward translation of the shallower water 

 deposits resultant on the uplift. No evidence has been brought 

 forward bearing directly on this point. 



SUMMARY 



The Berea of central and southern Ohio is largely a phase of the 

 Bedford but is readily distinguished by the much greater amount 



