

wiluamb.] ORTON ON THE WAVERLY. 185 



The upper limit of this series is determined to be the Conglomerate of 

 the Coal Measures by the presence of Subcarboniferous fossils below. 

 The lower limit is very sharply defined by stratigraphical relations. 



No. 5 consists mainly of soft, fine-grained shales, well exposed on 

 Licking River. No. 4, best seen at Hanover and Black Hand, consists 

 of coarse sandstones and conglomerates containing fucoids, with com- 

 pact drab sandstones and shales at the base. No. 3 occurs along Rac- 

 coon Creek in Franklin and Delaware Counties, and is composed of 

 blue and gray shales filled with nodular masses of iron ore. No organic 

 remains except fossil sea- weed have been found in this deposit. No. 2 

 contains fossil remains of fish and corresponds very closely with beds 

 in northern and southern Ohio. No. 1 is made up of compact and shaly 

 sandstones, with alternating shales and limestones, and is well exposed 

 on Rattlesnake and Walnut Creeks. 



In regard to the determination of this series of rocks as Devonian or 

 Carboniferous, the author concludes that there is u good reason for re- 

 taining the Cuyahoga sub-group in the Carboniferous, whatever may 

 be done with the rest of the Waverly." 



Mr. Edward Orton, 1 in 1882, in a paper on the bituminous matter of 

 the black shales, further discussed the classification of the Waverly. 



From the author's examination of the various black shales outcrop- 

 ping in Ohio and neighboring States, he concludes that the Huron and 

 the Cleveland shales of Newberry, separated in the eastern part of 

 Ohio by the greenish Erie shales, form a continuous series farther west 

 and constitute a mass from 250 to 350 feet in thickness, which must be 

 regarded as all of Devonian age. For this shale he proposes to retain 

 the name u Ohio, Black shale," applied to it by N. S. Shaler in the Geol- 

 ogy of Kentucky. The author recognized a second shale of similar 

 nature in Ohio, situated about a hundred feet above the top of the 

 former, called by Andrews the u Waverly Black shale." It was further 

 defined by Meek, who separated it from the Cuyahoga shale by its 

 fossil contents and called it the " Berea shale." It immediately over- 

 lies the Berea sandstone and forms the roof of most of the quarries of 

 this famous sandstone. These three black shales, the Huron and Cleve- 

 land of Newberry and the Berea of Meek, are alike in being of marine 

 origin and in being strongly bituminous. Analysis shows them to con- 

 tain 8 to 20 per cent of organic matter, and frequently they have taken 

 fire from burning brush heaps, and cases are recorded of their con- 

 tinuing to burn for weeks when once thus kindled. The bituminous 

 matter in them was supposed by Newberry 2 to have originated from 

 the decomposition of the " vegetation which lined the shores and cov- 

 ered the surface of a quiet and almost land-surrounded sea," like a 

 Sargasso sea. 



'Orton, Edward: A source of the bituminous matter in the Devonian and Subcarboniferous black 

 ■hales of Ohio. Am. Jour. Sci., 3d ser., vol. 24, pp. 171-174. 

 8 Geol. of Ohio, vol. 1, p. 156. 



