MEDIJiTA COUNTY. 367 



torrent that filled the valley, ia the bottom of which it now so quietly 

 flows. The passage of glaciers also helped to break up the rock and wear 

 away the softer, looser portions, leaving additional evidences in the 

 groovings of the surface. 



HOMER TOWNSHIP. 



The south-western township in Medina county is named Homer. The 

 rolling surface is cut through the whole length of the township by one 

 of the fountain streams of Black River, affording some fine exposures of 

 Cuyahoga, shale. The blufis are thirty feet high in some places, and the 

 opportunity of tracing out the succession of the layers is very good. The 

 rock is a soft gray shale with interspersed layers of hard sandy shale, of 

 a lighter color. The latter is occasionally worked out of the river bed 

 and used for foundation stone for bridges, etc.; but it is too hard to be cut 

 well, and long weathering will cause it to disintegrate or split into thin 

 slabs. Concretions of iron are found in the shale of this township as in 

 others, but the lime concretions are infrequent. No good fossil speci- 

 mens were obtained here, the shale being too soft to hold the forms. 



Galena has been found in Homer, and a few parties, more sanguine 

 than wise, have taken leases of land for lead-mining purposes. 



HARRISVILLE TOWNSHIP. 



The land of Harrisville township is somewhat rolling, and affords a 

 variety of soils. In some parts the land is clayey, and in others slightly 

 sandy. 



Peat covers over two thousand acres in this township. One-half of this 

 territory has the deposit not over eighteen inches deep, the underlying 

 clay being heavy, yet light colored. The average depth of the peat on 

 one thousand acres is about five feet. Most of the western and southern 

 parts of this Harrisville marsh have been plowed. The bed rock is 

 twelve to eighteen feet below the surface of the marsh. The land can be 

 shaken by jumping upon it, although cattle go all over it. The digging 

 of ditches has revealed quantities of shells, but no large fossils, so far as 

 could be learned. 



Railroad levels were run in 1853, between Wooster and Grafton, by Mr. 

 W. E. Ferguson, Engineer. The extreme elevation of the road, as it was 

 surveyed through the marsh, was three hundred and forty and three- 

 tenths feet above Lake Erie. The road was to have run west of the vil- 

 lage of Lodi, and the elevation there was three hundred and thirty-six 

 feet above Lake Erie. This would give the surface at the town-pump an 

 altitude of about three hundred and fifty feet. 



