440 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



been extensively worked in either of these counties in which abundance 

 of human bones have not been discovered. The skeletons' are usually 

 found within two or three feet of the surface. We are left to con- 

 jecture in giving any reason why this material was used in which 

 to make interments of the dead. Trinkets of any description are 

 extremely rare in such graves, although not entirely unknown. In 

 none, of which I heard, were there any indications of unusual care or 

 elaborateness in the interments. Possibly the ease of excavating a grave 

 in such a material may have determined the choice. But is it not a lit- 

 tle singular that the inhabitants of a long-past age should have known 

 the position of these gravel beds, covered, as they were, with a dense 

 forest ; while two generations of the intelligent people of this age had 

 not any thought of their existence until within a half dozen of years? 



Stone implements. — Flint, arrow and lance-points, stone-hammers, bark- 

 peelers, hematite fishing bobs or sinkers, and other articles of this class 

 are found especially along the water-courses. As no value and but a 

 passing interest have been attached to these articles, they have not been 

 preserved, but have been broken up or lost. Still many are found yet 

 by persons engaged in working the soil. No one locality has furnished 

 more than the borders of Deer Creek, but they are common on all the 

 streams, and, indeed, over the whole surface of the county are they found. 

 As the soil in Fayette and in parts of Clinton has not been subjected to 

 the plow as much as in other places, and, of course, some of it not 

 plowed at all, there perhaps remain more still to be gathered than have 

 ever been heretofore. Some persons, seeing in these articles a story of a 

 former race of human beings, who have left but little else to tell of their 

 manners or civilization, are gathering them up to preserve them from 

 destruction. Nothing more amazes one in contemplating these relics 

 of a people of a long past age than the immense number of them scat- 

 tered over the surface of the earth. Perhaps no single acre of ground in 

 Central or Southern Ohio but has furnished at least one flint arrow-point ; 

 but the average would be much greater than one to the acre, and it is not 

 too much to say that every farm, at least, has furnished sometime a stone 

 hatchet or bark-peeler. 



Hematite bowlder. — In Clinton county, near the residence of Samuel 

 Lamar, one of the county commissioners, I found a hematite bowlder 

 weighing about two hundred and fifty pounds. This was extremely'hard 

 and seemed to be of the same material from which the sinkers, referred 

 to in the last paragraph, were made. 



Flow-wells. — There are several wells in each county, from the mouth of 



