138 E. Orton—Lower Waverly Strata of Ohio. 
ArT. XXV.— Note on the Lower Waverly Strata of Ohio; by 
EpWArD Orton, Professor of Geology in Ohio State Univer- 
sity, Columbus, Ohio. 
THE Waverly Black Shale of Southern Ohio proves to be a 
very persistent stratum. It is but sixteen feet on the Ohio 
River, where it was first described by Professor E. B. Andrews, 
and at no point has it been found to exceed thirty feet in thick- 
ness, but it stretches without interruption from the Ohio River 
ake Erie, and now that it has been followed through the 
length of the State, it gives us the means of synchronizing the 
hitherto discordant elements of the lower part of the Waverly 
Group in a surprisingly satisfactory manner. : 
The identity of the Waverly Black Shale of Southern Ohio 
and the Cleveland Shale of Northern Ohio, which was suggested 
as probable ten years since by Dr. Newberry, and which has 
since been adopted by most of those who have written on the 
geology of the Waverly Group in Ohio, proves to be an error. 
r. Newberry has since shown that the Erie Shale wedges 
out as it is followed westward from Cleveland, letting the 
Cleveland Shale down upon the Huron Shale, near the mouth 
of Vermillion River. From this it would appear that the Black 
Shale that is followed southward from that point covers the 
interval occupied by three northern formations viz: the Huron, 
Hrie and Cleveland Shales. 
The Waverly Black Shale finds its place directly above the 
Berea Grit to the northward. The stratum has been distinctly 
described in the reports on the northern counties, but it has 
not been distinctly named. It has been treated of as the 
dark, fossiliferous shale at the base of the Cuyahoga Shale. 
No better name could be found for it than Berea Shale—for It 
makes the roof of the Berea quarries, just as it does of the 
lower Waverly quarries of Pike County. : 
sa result of this determination, it is seen that we have 10 
the Berea Grit a stratum that can be traced continuously from 
the Pennsylvania line westward to Hrie County, and from 
thence southward to the Ohio River. The equivalence of the 
several principal subdivisions of the series in Northern and 
Southern Ohio is now apparent. Thus we find that the Bed- 
ford Shale is the Waverly Shale of Pike County, the Berea 
Grit is the Lower Waverly of Central and Southern Ohio, the 
Berea Shale (base of the Cuyah Shale) is the Waverly 
Black Shale, and the Cuyahoga Shale of the northern counties 
is represented by just about the same measure and the same 
character of beds in Pike County that it has at the north. 
At about four hundred feet above the Great Black Shale, 
