THE PREGLACIAL DRAINAGE OF OHIO. 25 



from its mouth. The remains of its ancient beds would form 

 pools and ponds of standing water, furnishing fit residences for 

 the fresh water shells, whose fossil remains are now found there. 

 Great changes evidently have been made in the direction of all 

 •our water courses before they found their present levels." 



The valley floor at Layman is not quite as large as that at 

 Barlow, but it did not carry as large a stream. Several fields in 

 this old valley floor show still, under cultivation, a black valley 

 soil and the writer was informed by Mr. J. A. Gage, of Layman, 

 that at one place there is a deep muck from which much decayed 

 wood has been taken and the waters issuing therefrom have a 

 very disagreeable odor. 



The old floor at Fleming is still smaller than the others and 

 probably carried a smaller stream. The full depths of the silt 

 deposits that cover these floors was not determined as all the 

 wells examined were very shallow. The bordering hills asso- 

 ciated with these old valleys were very low and well graded and 

 usually carried very deep soils which they often retain at present, 

 where not exposed to the erosion of the more recent cycle. 



Not directly in this divide but associated with the Wolf 

 Creek basin is another abandoned valley floor near Watertown. 

 This floor lies about two miles northeast of the town and about a 

 mile east of the South Fork of Wolf Creek. Rainbow Creek 

 heads on this floor. Whether all or only a part of the stream 

 which occupied this Rainbow Creek valley drained over this 

 floor is as yet undetermined. If there were other cols on the 

 Muskingum below Lowell and the reversed Rainbow Creek car- 

 ried a section of the present Muskingum, they will require very 

 •careful detailed work to determine, as the erosion of the valley 

 of the Muskingum has been so great in this portion that almost 

 every trace of such cols has been lost. There are some indica- 

 tions in the character of the divides which would seem to locate 

 one such below the mouth of Bear Run. If this should be cer- 

 tainly located it would follow that both Cat Run and Bear Run 

 drained through Rainbow Creek reversed and over the old Water- 

 town valley floor. The location of this col is not indicated on the 

 map as it was not considered sufficiently well established. 



