638 aEOLOGT OF OHIO. 



above. It is a red or chocolate- colored band, from fifteen to twenty feet 

 in thickness, that makes the uppermost portion of the Huron shale. It 

 is thus seen that the Huron shale ends, as it began, with shales of the 

 same general character with the main body of the formation, but differ- 

 ing in color. 



This red band is best shown at Taylor's Station, in Jefferson township, 

 and at several points in Mifflin township, in the eastern bank of Big 

 Walnut Creek. One exposure in particular may be named, which is very 

 conspicuous, viz., the one seen in the slate cliff, opposite Central Col- 

 lege. There is no black slate above it, but the passage to the shales of 

 another formation is gradual. The question then can be raised, as in the 

 case of the Olentangy shales, whether they belong with the Huron prop- 

 erly, or to the overlying bed. The fact that no change in the bedding of 

 the shales occurs, leads to the reference already made. 



4. Waverly Group. — The next formation in order, and the last in the 

 scale of the county, is the Waverly group. Its area will be seen from the 

 map to be much less than that of either of the two principal elements 

 already named. It is found in three separate bodies, which are situated 

 as follows : 1. A small outlier in the south-eastern part of Jefferson town- 

 ship; 2. The largest body of the county, which occupies all of Plain 

 township, and parts of Blendon, Mifflin, Jefferson, and Truro, and finally, 

 3. A corner of Madison township, south of Winchester, which embraces 

 but a few hundred acres. 



The first of these is well shown in the Central Ohio Railroad cut, at 

 Taylor's Station. The cut is made as the road ascends from the valley 

 to the ujjland. The stream is now bedded in the black shale, and large 

 exposures of it are shown in the valley to the eastward. The red band 

 named on the preceding page is distinctly seen as the eastern margin of 

 the valley is reached, and the grade of the road is laid in a soft, blue 

 shale, very different in texture and appearance from the three hundred 

 feet just below it. Ten feet above the track, the sandstone of the lower 

 Waverly is shown in very characteristic courses. 



The stone is generally thin bedded, the courses not being more than 

 six or eight inches thick, except where by an unknown agency, the ma- 

 terial of tbe layer is gathered up for a few square feet into an ungainly 

 mass, from which the lines of bedding have been lost. These masses are 

 sometimes two feet in thickness. The only explanation suggested, is 

 the vague one that the rock was wrought into these shapes by concre- 

 tionary force. The lower side of the lowermost layer is almost always 

 beautifully ripple marked, and similar indications of shallow water oc- 

 cur again and again through the thirty feet succeeding. This particular 

 section holds, however, but ten feet of the bedded sandstones. 



