464 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



mote antiquity could not be ascribed to these remains of human art and 

 industry from anything in their situation. In the course of a few cen- 

 turies the rivers in the secular oscillations which they execute from bank 

 to bank, a result of laws in constant operation, must disturb and redis- 

 tribute, by the constant eating away of the bank, the whole of the allu- 

 vial deposit ndar its own level. Nothing is more constant, nothing more 

 certain than the wear of an abrupt alluvial bank during high water, 

 with a regularity which admits of calculation. The great number of 

 such stone-tool manufactories, which are now disclosed along the course 

 of the Ohio River, afiford evidence that their age was not far back in gray 

 antiquity. A few banks that are now crumbling might have escaped 

 the erosion of the surging waters for a very long period; but it is in- 

 credible that so many as are now delivering up their relics of human art, 

 their evidences of human industry and ingenuity, places in which for 

 the first time since the ancient workman finally laid down his tools or 

 kindled his fire upon his well-made hearth of bowlder pebbles, for the 

 last time, should have escaped for indefinite ages just such action of the 

 water as they are now yielding to. 



Remains of Extinct Animals. — A few bones of animals not now found in 

 the State — as a few teeth of the beaver, and portions of the antlers of 

 one or two elks, and some reports of discoveries of mammoth or mas- 

 todon remains — were all that came to my knowledge of fossils of this 

 character. We may be prepared to hear of the uiscovery of such fossils 

 in the peat beds, if they are ever much worked. Peat seems to possess 

 the property of preserving the bodies of animals which become mired 

 in it. 



BEDDED STONE. 



We come now to speak of the underlying consolidated strata which 

 are exposed within the county. The only bedded stone found within 

 Shelby county, lies in a narrow strip bordering the river, extending from 

 the southern boundary of the county to within a mile of the town of 

 Sidney. Prom the county line to a locality known as Boggs' Mill, 

 wherever stone is seen in situ, it belongs to the formation called, by geol- 

 ogists, the Clinton. It is the stone which immediately underlies the 

 building stone in the suburbs of Piqua, in Miami county, and which is 

 burned into lime so extensively just south of that town. It possesses, in 

 the locality in Shelby county referred to, all the characteristics by which 

 the stone of this formation is so surely detected. The physical charac- 

 teristics of being unevenly bedded, highly crystallized, of sandy texture, 

 and of a rust color from the presence of iron, and, withal, a hard stone, 

 here show themselves. The fossils common to the Clinton in the vicin- 



