PIKE COUNTY. 635 



It is certain that the great ice-sheet never brought its burdens of foreign 

 materials to these areas. There are in Pike county no deposits of bank 

 gravel— the great resource of the districts north for road-making— if a 

 single exception is made for the neighborhood of Cynthiana. The river 

 beds and banks furnish an abundant supply of gravel to the regions adja- 

 cent; but the absence of bank gravel sho\«s that we have passed beyond 

 the most characteristic effects of the Drift. 



The Scioto valley— like all similar valleys in this portion of the State- 

 is filled with deposits of modified Drift throughout its whole extent. 

 This valley Drift in Pike county is recognized under four divisions, viz., 

 the first, second, third, and fourth bottoms. The first bottoms, the lowest 

 of the series, comprise the lands that are overflowed at every flood ; the 

 second bottoms are covered only with extreme high water. The bound- 

 ary of the third bottoms is quite distinctly shown in a terrace fifteen or 

 twenty feet in height, and its surface is elevated by the same measure 

 above the highest floods. The fourth and last division has an elevation 

 of about sixty feet above low water, and is generally bounded by a dis- 

 tinct terrace. It is not to be understood that all of these divisions are to 

 be recognized ever}' where. ' Sometimes the first bottoms extend to the 

 edge of the bedded rocks which bound the valley ; and more frequently 

 the four divisions are all represented in a bank fifty or sixty feet above 

 the river channel. Between Jasper and Piketon the whole series is very 

 handsomely shown. 



The third and fourth divisions agree in general composition. They 

 both consist of gravel— a large part of which is limestone — of sand, loam, 

 and clay, variously intermingled. The broad, fertile, and well-drained 

 tracts of the fourth bottoms furnish very attractive and advantageous 

 locations for residence, and have been selected for the two principal 

 towns of the valley, viz., Waverly and Piketon. 



The first and second bottoms furnish the most productive lands of the 

 county. There is, in fact, no better corn land in the State than this di- 

 vision within the limits of Pike county. Their fertility is maintained 

 unimpaired by annual deposits from back-water— the overflow of the 

 river being now quite commonly regulated by levees. The depth of the 

 annual deposit upon the lowest bottoms varies from one inch to one foot. 

 When the larger measure is reached, a winter must intervene before the 

 mud works kindly under tillage. 



As the drainage of the State was .gradually arrested in the later stages 

 of the Drift period by the northward subsidence of the continent, it 

 seems probable that the valley was largely filled to the height of the last 

 terrace. When a re-elevation began, the clearing out of the old channel 



