402 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



of the broad and fertile intervales of the streams that now traverse the 

 valleys or of the still more desirable areas that were the valleys of an 

 earlier epoch, but which are now deserted by streams, and which are 

 evenly filled with the beds of the later drift, together with uplands rising 

 by 'gentle slopes to an altitude of four to five hundred feet above the river, 

 and whose' surfaces are scarcely less productive than the areas first named. 



The soil of all this district consists, in great measure, of decomposed 

 limestone-gravel, and exhibits every excellence of limestone land. A 

 single area may be noted here as furnishing a unique line of facts in the 

 native vegetation of the county. A chestnut grove is to be found in the 

 south east corner of Union township, near Pisgah Church. It is well 

 known that the chestnut confines itself generally to the slate and sand- 

 stone soils of the county. Indeed, the boundary between the slates and 

 the limestones in south-western Ohio could be defined with satisfactory 

 precision by noting the line where the chestnuts begin as one passes 

 eastward. Isolated trees are known in the gravels and sands of lime- 

 stone districts, it is true, but they are very rare. Dr. John A. Warder 

 has called attention to one growing near Milford, in the Little Miami 

 Valley, and another is known in Greene county, but in the area to which 

 attention is now invited, a forest growth in which the chestnut is a large 

 element, is lound. The trees have attained a diameter of four feet in 

 some instances and in others stumps, long dead, are seen with large trees 

 growing from them. The tree fruits well here and reproduces itself 

 abundantly. Chestnuts (the fruit) were sold to the amount of forty dol- 

 lars from a single farm three years ago. 



The soil does not betray any peculiarities upon a superficial view, but 

 the wells in the vicinity all show a great deposit of yellow sand beneath 

 the surface here. Many fruitless attempts to secure wells in this neigh- 

 borhood are on record, the sand proving to be a quicksand, and caving in 

 so rapidly as to frustrate the sinking of the shaft to water. It has been 

 thought that the sand would prove to be a moulding sand, but no trials 

 of it have been made. The bed of sand is anomalous, and it is interest- 

 ing to note that the native forest growth which covers it is also excep- 

 tional. There are no peculiarities in the remaining drift soils of the 

 county that deserve special mention. 



The poorest of them, as those covering the uplands of the northern and 

 and western townships, if-handled with skill and subjected to a rational 

 system of agriculture, would take high rank when compared with even 

 the strongest lands of the Atlantic border. Measured against the fruitful 

 valleys and slopes just mentioned, and tilled under a system which even 



