48 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



must have had his attention drawn to the great masses of local Drift 

 with which it is obstructed. This Drift is largely composed of rounded 

 pebbles of the limestones which form the highlands bordering the upper 

 part of the valley, and they doubtless represent the materials which 

 once occupied the gorge now opened northward through the watershed. 

 The more easterly gaps present the same phenomena. The valley of 

 the Scioto was once a broad and deep trough, cut in the solid rock, now 

 nearly filled with beds of gravel, sand, and bowlders, of which the thick- 

 ness has never been determined. In boring the State House well at 

 Columbus, 123 feet of coarse, valley Drift was penetrated before the rock 

 was reached. The State House stands on a terrace of gravel, sand, and 

 bowlders, which is on the eastern side of the old valley, and it is appar- 

 ent that the old rock trough, here at least a mile in width, was once 

 filled to this level. Its depth in the central portion is, doubtless, much 

 greater than it is under the city of Columbus. 



From the great bend of the Cuyahoga a belt of gravel reaches southward 

 through Summit and Stark counties, forming a geological and topograph- 

 ical feature which will be found described in the reports on these counties. 

 There are here, apparently, two deep channels, one of which is quite filled, 

 and the other is partially excavated by the Tuscarawas river. The first of 

 these lies west of Canton, and has been penetrated to the depth of 100 feet 

 without finding the rock bottom. Buck Hill, of- which a section is given 

 on page 44, is one of the gravel knolls which mark the line of this 

 channel. The other gravel belt borders the present course of the Tus- 

 carawas in Stark county. The numerous borings that have been made 

 for coal in and near the valley of this stream show that the gravel is 

 sometimes more than 100 feet in depth, reaching far below the present 

 stream bed. The gravel hills and terraces west of the river, at and below 

 Massillon, form parts of this belt. At the Charity School, a well was 

 sunk 100 feet in gravel and sand, and coniferous wood was taken out at 

 the bottom. In the town of Dover, at the junction of Sugar creek and 

 the Tuscarawas, a boring for salt showed an accumulation of gravel and 

 sand reaching to the depth of 175 feet below the present surface level of 

 the Tuscarawas. 



The accumulation of Drift in the valley of the Beaver, and in that 

 of the Ohio, near the mouth of the former stream, is so unusual that 

 Mr. Morris Miller, who has given much attention to the surface geol- 

 ogy of this region, was much struck by it. In a paper which he has 

 published, he accounts for the existence of this mass of transported 

 material by supposing it to be the product of a great flood which 

 burst through the gap I have described. It seems to me, however, that 



