FAIRFIELD COUNTY. 593 



nearly the center of Madison, and empties into the Hocking River in 

 Hocking county. 



Drift— The whole county may be included within the area of the 

 Drift. In the lower grounds we. find in sinking wells the blue Drift 

 clays, and every where are to be seen the gravel and bowlders of the 

 Drift period. The quantity of Drift materials originally brought into 

 the county must have been immense, for from the heads of the Hocking 

 must have been obtained the supply of sand and gravel needed to form 

 the vast gravel terraces which skirt the river to its mouth. Bowlders 

 are found every where in the lowlands and on the highlands. They are 

 of all sizes, from that of the famous, one on Baldwin's Run, a little east 

 of Lancaster, which is approximately eighteen feet by sixteen feet in its 

 two diameters, down to those only a few inches through. They are gran- 

 ites, diorites, quartzites, and other hard rocks, capable of enduring the 

 rough usage to which they have been subjected since first they were 

 broken from their original beds far north of the lakes. In some cases 

 the bowlders are limestone, and so abundant that they are broken lip and 

 burned for quicklime. This has been done to a considerable extent in 

 Fairfield county. 



In the immediate valley of the Hocking we find the modified Drift in 

 the form of sand and gravel terraces, which were once great sand fiats 

 and bars, formed by the stream when it stood from eighty to one hundred 

 feet higher than now. Much of the city of Lancaster is built upon such 

 a terrace. Underneath the sand and gravel, and elsewhere in the lower 

 grounds, we often find the blue Drift clay containing scattered bowlders. 

 In this clay we obtain trunks of trees, roots, twigs, etc., generally of conif- 

 erous type. They represent the vegetation which grew in the valleys 

 or along the hill-sides at the beginning of the Drift era. Many speci- 

 mens of such buried wood have been found in sinking wells in Lancaster. 

 The foregoing are the leading facts of Drift phenomena in Fairfield. 

 The general subject of the Drift and of Drift agencies is more fully con- 

 sidered in Chapter L., in this volume of the Report. 



The geology of Fairfield county is very simple. The county lies wholly 

 within the range of the Waverly formation, with a trifling exception of 

 a very limited area in the extreme eastern edge of the county. This 

 exception is found on the high hill in the neighborhood of East Rush- 

 ville. Here, south of the village, we find a thin seam of coal, and other 

 rocks characterizing the Coal Measures. It is possible that in the east- 

 ern edge of Rush Creek township there may be some hill-tops which be- 

 long to the same formation. There are, however, no available coal seams 

 in the county. 

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