PIKE COUNTY. 621 



Creek, one mile east of the village of Buchanan, a very interesting ex- 

 hibition of the ripple-marks is furnished. There is an equally good ex- 

 posure along the Waverly and Chillicothe pike, near the north line of 

 the county. The section of the lower beds at Piketon is represented in 

 the following diagram. (See Fig. 3.) 



The thickness of the shales has already been given as varying between 

 eighty and one hundred feet. At Jasper they measure 95 feet; at 

 Prather's quarries, two miles north, and on the same side of the river, 

 89 feet; at Waverly, 90 feet; at Chillicothe, 83.67 feet. 



2. The Waverly shales are overlain by heavy ledges of the finest 

 building stone in Ohio. This division may appropriately be called the 

 Waverly Quarry System. Wherever this series is shown in southern Ohio, 

 ledges of building stone are found at this general horizon. It is this 

 very ledge, indeed, that gave its name to the whole formation. All of the 

 stone quarried at Waverly and its vicinity, at an early date, came from 

 this horizon. The greatest thickness found in this division is thirty-two 

 and a half feet. This measurement was obtained in a closed section one 

 mile south of the village of Jasper. Its composition is shown in the ap- 

 pended figure. (See Fig. 4.) From Jasper to. Waverly, where the typical 

 quarries of the system occur, the thickness never reaches these figures, 

 because of the fact that the system as it is here shown is in no case en- 

 tirely complete. Its uppermost beds have been removed by denudation. 

 At Jasper the quarry beds measure twenty-five feet, and at Waverly they * 

 do not fall below twenty feet. The quarry courses thin out, however, 

 rapidly to the north and east. At Marcus's Run, on the east side of the 

 river, three miles above Waverly, there is a fine exhibition of a closed 

 section of the quarry courses in which they measure less than ten feet. 

 On the western side of the county, also, not only is the thickness re- 

 duced, but the character of the courses is changed. They consist to a 

 much greater degree of thin and ''shelly" layers than in the central 

 districts above described. At Jasper and Waverly the lowermost course 

 of the system is generally one of the most valuable, but on the east side 

 of the river, at the locality just mentioned, the lower course is worthless, 

 and the only available bed lies just at the summit of the system. Many 

 courses that in the quarry appear desirable, prove unreliable when ex- 

 posed t<4 the weather. Serious loss results if there is a lack of knowl- 

 edge or of conscience on the part of the quarryman in the selection of 

 the proper courses. Experience alone can determine the character of the 

 several beds, and it is not safe' to apply conclusions drawn from one ele- 

 ment of the series at a particular point to the same element at another 

 point. The most valuable courses in the quarry pass sometimes quite 



