STRATIGRAPHY OF OHIO WAVERLY FORMATIONS 769 



represents a phase of the same deltal action. Without much doubt 

 the source was to the south-southeastward; it is not, however, 

 incHned structure which indicates this, but the increase in the 

 relative amount of sandstone in that direction. At one time the 

 writer believed that the deposits of this facies were the offshore 

 accumulations on the east side of the Cincinnati dome and that 

 they were evidence that the dome at that time was land area. 

 The rapid westward thinning of the Henley shale member at the 

 base of the Cuyahoga supported this, and indeed, so far as the 

 writer can see, can be interpreted only as indicating that the dome 

 was at least an appreciable topographic feature on the ocean floor 

 at the beginning of Cuyahoga time. It does not now appear, how- 

 ever, that the sandstone of the Vanceburg facies can be interpreted 

 as evidence of a shore near by to the westward. The fact that in 

 Kentucky, within a few miles of the Ohio River, a pure shale facies 

 is found lying to the westward of this sandstone area with no red 

 shale demonstrates that its general nature is that of a lobe of sand- 

 stone, pushed out into open water from the mouth of a stream or 

 other definite source of sand, not an alongshore sand deposit. 

 Indeed, nothing has been observed anywhere in Ohio or Kentucky 

 which suggests that land lay to the westward in the region of the 

 Cincinnati dome. 



It is possible that local conditions, for example stronger wave- 

 and ocean-current action, will explain the structures found in these 

 sandstones, so widely different from those of the conglomerate 

 facies. But better still is the assumption that the stream currents 

 (or whatever other local current may have been the source) that 

 fed these sands were far weaker than in the Hocking Valley and 

 Toboso areas; the wave-action being the same, under such condi- 

 tions the feeble waves of this sea might well have been better able 

 to distribute the fine sands brought in at this point, whereas in the 

 conglomerate areas the stronger feeding currents, with their loads 

 of coarse pebbly sand, locally dominated over the wave-action. 



The source of the material. — It is of interest to note the nature 

 of the nearest sediments of this age which are exposed to the south- 

 eastward and southward as a possible source of the material. The 

 Waverly formations occupy the same interval in the geological 



