THE PREGLACIAL DRAINAGE OF OHIO. 27 



One of these sections about a mile east of Torch shows 

 about eight feet of a sandy clay graduating into the much de- 

 cayed underlying rock and overlain with about two feet of gravel 

 and this with about five to six feet of the loess-like silt. 



Both east and west of Torch the old valley floor is deeply 

 cut by recent erosion into many very picturesque ravines and 

 gorges. This is especially true on the west. The railroad fol- 

 lows up one of these ravines from the valley of the Hocking 

 onto the old valley floor making a grade of about 125 feet in 

 about two miles. This old floor extends westward to the Hock- 

 ing and crosses the Hocking valley at Coolville. A cut on tht 

 pike in the main street_of the village shows a fine section of the 

 gravels in which the shingling to the southwest is very marked. 



From Coolville the old valley is a very conspicuous feature 

 in the typography as it extends south west ward past Tupper s 

 Plains (Figure 2, Plate V) and into the basin of Shade River. 

 Between Coolville and Tupper's Plains the old valley floor is 

 deeply cut by a small tributary of the Hocking. At the Plains 

 the old floor forms a part of the divide between this tributary and 

 the East Fork of Shade River. A few wells sunk in the valley 

 penetrate from twenty to thirty feet of clay silts to a water bear- 

 ing sand or gravel layer. 



Two other remnants of old valley floors may be referred to, 

 though somewhat beyond the exact limits of the major topic of 

 this report. One of these lies between the headwaters of Rush 

 Run, a tributary of Federal Creek, and the Hocking; the other on 

 the divide separating the middle fork of Shade River from the 

 Hocking and about a mile south of Guysville. These are of im- 

 portance in connection with the drainage changes of Federal 

 Creek and the lower part of the Hocking below Athens. 



RESTORATION OF THE OLD DRAINAGE SYSTEM. 



With the general features of the region, the position of the 

 old eroded cols, which cross the present valleys, and the posi- 

 tions of the remnants of the old valley floors, thus very briefly 

 presented, it seems possible to trace with " considerable degree 

 of certainty the old drainage system. This is represented on the 

 map in red. This reconstruction is based on many detailed 



