THE BASE OF THE WAVERLY. 35 



for a definite lower boundary of the Waverly it must be found in the Berea 

 grit, which, as so well shown by Orton, is a sharply limited and easily recog- 

 nizable horizon throughout Ohio. If, however, it can be proved that the 

 original application of the term Waverly was primarily to the Bedford shale, 

 w^iatever else was also included, we are placed in an awkward predicament 

 not wholly without parallel in the history of geological progress. 



Lithologically and faunally, I repeat, the affinities of the Bedford are cer- 

 tainly with the underlying shales rather than the shales above the grit. 



The Berea Grit. — We have nothing to add to Orton's admirable account 

 of this distinctive bed, which forms the next element in the column, except 

 to note the occurrence of the Devonian forms already mentioned in the upper 

 courses and the immediately overlying shales. 



The Berea Shale. — This term is conveniently applied to the thin band of 

 bituminous shale above the grit and perhaps should not be extended (as the 

 writer has done in a previous paper) to the gray and blue shales above. In 

 southern Ohio it varies from fifteen to twenty feet in thickness and is little 

 more than two feet thick at Chagrin falls. It is typically exposed in the 

 Cuyahoga valley, but its fossils at that place extend upward to the flags 

 which form the "Big falls of the Cuyahoga," thus justifying from the stand- 

 point of paleontology the attempt to extend the application of the name. 

 The fossils are mostly Lingula and Discina of several species, but Chonetes, 

 PrGdudus and other forms also occur. 



The Cuyahoga Shale. — Using this term, in the sense in which it was em- 

 ployed by Professor Orton, for the 100-150 feet above the Berea shale, we 

 here encounter one of the surprises of our study. As is well known, Dr. 

 Newberry applied the term Cuyahoga shale to the whole series of strata 

 filling the interval between the Berea grit and the Chester limestone. I 

 have sufiiciently shown that this use is impossible, because of the fact that 

 at least three important formations are included and confused. In central 

 Ohio it is easy to recognize these horizons and to determine approximately 

 their limits. In 1888 Professor Orton, on stratigraphical grounds, deter, 

 mined that the entire series as exposed in the Cuyahoga valley lies below 

 the reddish and yellowish freestones and conglomerates constituting our 

 divisions II and III and his Logan group. He makes the natural error, 

 however, of concluding that " as here limited it is, for the most part, very 

 poor in fossils," suggesting that " the fossils with which the Cuyahoga shale 

 has been credited have been largely derived from the division next to be 

 described " — i. e., the Logan group. 



Until the summer of 1890 I have had little opportunity to examine care- 

 fully the exposures in Cuyahoga county, and have refrained from attempt- 

 ing to complete the correlation. Last summer (1889) Mr. Cooper was 

 commissioned to examine the exposures in Richland, Wayne and Summit 



