462 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



and far down it, strewing its beaches with these' materials so useful to 

 man. Perhaps no water-course ia the State has borne so much sand and 

 gravel along its course and lodged it in places where it is accessible to 

 man. This is a striking peculiarity of the Miami River; its broad 

 terraces are underlain with a bed of the cleanest, finest gravel for road- 

 making in quantities practically inexhaustible. I have but to cite the 

 immense deposits beneath the alluvium at Middletown, on both sides of 

 the river, at Hamilton, and indeed along its whole course, culminating 

 in that bed at Harrison Junction, cut and exposed by the Jndianopolis 

 and Cincinnati Railroad. 



Bowlders — While the transported rocks do not constitute a marked 

 feature in Shelby county, still there are many of them ; but as Miami 

 county contains so much greater a proportion, they will receive special 

 attention in the account of that county. The largest bowlder, however, 

 that has yet come under my observation in the State lies near the rail- 

 road, one mile east of Sidney. It contains twelve hundred and fifty cubic 

 feet, and weighs about one hundred and three tons. 



Human remains. — As in other counties, in nearly every instance where 

 gravel beds have been opened to obtain gravel for road making, skeleton 

 remains of human beings have been discovered. They lie invariably 

 near the surface of the ground, and soon crumblfi to dust when exposed 

 to the influence of the atmosphere. Careful observations do not seem 

 generally to have been made as to the mode of placing the body in the 

 earth, but enough was learned to induce the belief that no one custom of 

 sepulture was invariably adhered to. It is not a little singular that these 

 dry places were chosen as places of interment for the dead of that race, 

 whichever it was, whose dead are found decaying in them. With im- 

 perfect means for opening graves lor their dead in the earth, it is per- 

 haps not unreasonable to suppose that they buried their dead in the 

 gravel because, with their tools, the task was more easily effected in such 

 localities than in the harder clay. This supposition seems to derive force 

 from the appearance of carelessness in these interments. The bodies are 

 thrust in a hole feet foremost, and forced into a. small space. It is very 

 seldom that trinkets were buried with these dead, though sometimes it 

 is the case. But we must notice that keenness of observation, which 

 detected, so unerringly, the hidden beds of gravel, which, though needed, 

 were in many instances entirely unsuspected by those who ploughed and 

 reapt. above them, until the exigencies of road-making caused more 

 thorough search to be made by those who searched without certain indi- 

 cations, by tentative methods, and often without hope of success With 

 the forests cleared away, and the soil under cultivation, and often dug into 



