36 Putnam Hill Strata. 



14. Slaty clay — upper portion of the bed dark colored, middle 

 and lower parts, light blue. This great deposit contains a few veg- 

 etable impressions in the upper part, with imbedded nodules of iron 

 ore scattered through the whole. The lower part contains some 

 sand, within a few feet of where it rests on the sand rock below. — 

 60 feet. 



15. Sand rock, composed mainly of siliceous sand, tolerably fine 

 grained, with a little mica, general aspect yellowish. The struc- 

 ture of the upper part of the deposit is compact, or in very thick 

 beds. The Zanesville canal is excavated in this rock, and as the 

 work proceeded, it furnished many fine specimens of fossil trees, 

 carbonized wood, and impressions, both in outline and figure, resem- 

 bling the scales, and form of an immense fish, of some extinct spe- 

 cies. A figure of a portion of one of these casts is given at No. 12, 

 (page 6 of the wood cuts.) The centre of each scale is deeply sunk 

 in this cast, but in the original, this part must have been raised, 

 standing out boldly from the surface like the bosses on a buckler. 

 The plates are arranged in rather curved lines, reposing on each 

 other like tiles on a roof, and must have been a quarter of an inch 

 in thickness, and from a half to three-fourths of an inch across the 

 face. Towards the back of the specimen they are crowded and 

 smaller, as if compressed forcibly together. It was, however, after 

 all, most probably not a fish, but a portion of the trunk of a palm 

 tree. Nos. 13 and 14, (page 6) have been in ray possession, sev- 

 eral years. They were received from Mr. Horace Nye, to whom 

 I am indebted for many similar favors, he having furnished the most 

 of the fossil specimens exhibited in the section of" Putnam Hill." 



From the texture of the rock, I think they are from a more ele- 

 vated bed, but are certainly from this vicinity. No. 13 appears 

 to be impressed by the bark of a tree, similar to those now living. 

 No. 14 is more lozenge shaped, and I should think lived at a 

 period between those found in our coal deposits, and the growth of 

 the earliest species of those now clothing the earth ; there being 

 a most marked and entire difference between those of the two 

 periods. No. 15 (page 5) is a cast, apparently the termina- 

 tion of the trunk of some ancient palm tree. It is about eighteen 

 inches in length, and three inches in diameter. The surface co- 

 vered with lozenge shaped scales, arranged in spirally oblique lines. 

 No. 16 (page 7 of the wood cuts) is about fifteen inches in length 

 and six inches in diameter at the larger extremity. This is only 



