THE PREGLACIAL DRAINAGE OF OHIO. 63 



divide, but the character and quality of the earth together with 

 the strike of the rock strata, determines the trend of the rivulets 

 that make up the creeks, and the creeks continue in the same 

 .general course until a ravine has been reached cutting into 

 strata of lower geologic formation ; here a new direction may 

 he given, which is again modified by elevation and strike of 

 strata. Unlike Wayne county, the strike of the strata in 

 Holmes county is very irregular. We used all these points in 

 following the line of divide, spending five days between Lou- 

 •donville, Nashville, Napoleon, Oxford, Millersburgh and 

 Holmesville, and the prime thing noticed, as 'obscuring the in- 

 vestigation, was the influence of the glacial moraine on the direc- 

 tion of the rivulets. The morainic material from Stark to Ash- 

 land county is abundant on an irregular line from two to four 

 miles north of the crest of highest hills and gradually thins 

 out to the crest, creating an intervening border plain where the 

 rivulets seem to struggle to find a way out, and then, shuddering 

 back, make crow-feet markings on the summit, or they huddle 

 together, forming little pools, or they spread out to form peat 

 swamps, like the notable one north of Berlin where the Ohio 

 Ground Sloth (Megalonis Jeffersonii) was found. 



Any one will recognize these important facts who will crit- 

 ically examine the line of the terminal moraine as platted by 

 Prof. G. F. Wright. 



I say important because they must be used in questionable 

 cases, as the Sugar Creek and upper Tuscarawas regions. 



This brings me to the preglacial channels that drained the 

 Carboniferous side of the completed hydrographic basin and 

 were tributary to the common water way. The first on the west 

 was a small channel coming in just south of Loudonville and 

 one mile north of the present confluence of the Clear and Black 

 forks ; it drained the higher hills of Hanover township and is 

 crossed by the new bed of the Clear Fork. Drakes Valley from 

 Nashville to Lakeville marks the line of the second. 



The third in order drained the limestone highlands of 

 Ripley and enters the main channel just west of Shreve. A well 

 on the D. E. Foltz farm shows 91 feet to water but no rock. 

 We are now at the south exposure of the Limestone ridge of 



