212 Ohio State Academy of Science 



are fragments of wrecks, and other driftwood, articles of various 

 sorts thrown or lost from boats, coal, cinders, nuts, fish, bones 

 of various vertebrates and shells of molluscs. We once found 

 on a lonely part of the beach the skeleton of a swan which 

 probably after, being wounded perished on the lake and was 

 entombed in the sand near the 'trest of the beach by the same 

 storm that brought it ashore. Even the cartilages of the trachea 

 with its curious convolution inside the sternum were still pre- 

 served. Various things through long attrition by sand and 

 pebbles have come to resemble the latter so closely that their 

 nature is a puzzle to the novice — wood, coal, peat, brick, drain- 

 age tile, pottery and glass made opaque and quite free from 

 sharp points or edges. The source of the last when its nature is 

 comprehended may not be so puzzling to account for as that of 

 the peat which occurs at various places along the lake shore to 

 the very end of Cedar Point. This is derived from the remains 

 of marsh vegetation which once flourished where the lake is now. 

 The bar is not so far out as formerly and part of the marsh that 

 was originally behind it is now in front of it. These fragments 

 are perhaps broken loose in winter, when the water is low and 

 the ice that has been resting upon the exposed marsh, sometimes 

 in winrows ten or fifteen feet high, is drifted ashore by the wind. 

 At least I found many large and angular ones nearly free from 

 sand after the ice had broken up Jan. 1, 1905. Some of them 

 were fifteen inches thick and more than four feet in length. A 

 long line of these extended northwest from a point about 21^ 

 miles from Rye Beach. Toward Rye Beach for quite a distance 

 none were noticed though within a mile or so of it there were a 

 dozen or more, increasing in size toward the beach, the largest 

 eighteen inches long. There are never large ones on this part 

 of the beach. The small ones are derived from the marsh at the 

 outlet of Sawmill Creek close to Rye Beach. The portion of this 

 marsh now covered by the lake bristles with the roots of button- 

 bush so close together that -no large masses of muck are loosened 

 from among them. A third locality from which the muck is 

 derived is probably along the shore of the Carrying Ground. - 



Between the buried valleys of Plum Brook and Sawmill 

 Creek the clay is probably so near the surface that soon after the 

 marsh muck was uncovered by the lake moving the bar over 

 onto the marsh, it was torn loose and perhaps ground to pieces 

 by the waves but I cannot say but what some still remains where 

 it was formed and now covered by the sand and water of the lake. 



Allen Remington and Jacob Lay have seen large quantities 

 of peat cast ashore by storms occurring when there was no ice. 

 The former says the storms accompanying the high water of 



