BOSS COUNTY. 



649 



lent state of preservation, can hardly be called rare. The teeth and 

 plates are the parts generally shown. In a small run that crosses the 

 old Marietta road, three miles above Chillicothe, interesting slabs were 

 found. 



This slate contains sulphuret of iron in considerable quantity, and the 

 water that descends through it is, consequently, charged with the prod- 

 ucts of the decomposition of this substance. Sulphur springs often 

 mark its outcrops. A spring of this kind, quite well known in the 

 north-eastern quarter of the county, finds its way through the slate on 

 the. north side of Sugar-Loaf Mountain, near the south line of Green 

 township. The slates have a thickness of twenty feet at this point, and 

 are overlain by a heavy and interesting section of the upper Waverly. 



6. This last named division, the upper Waverly, including every 

 thing in the series above the Waverly black slate and below the Carbon- 

 iferous series, remains to be briefly characterized. It constitutes a valu- 

 able element in the county geological t scale, absolutely and relatively 

 more valuable than the same member in Pike county. The extreme 

 thickness of this division does not exceed four hundred and twenty-five 

 feet in any single section. A greater thickness of these beds may, per- 

 haps, be found in the north-eastern corner of the county, where the series 

 is certainly quite different from that observed in the south-eastern sec- 

 tion. In Liberty and in Jefferson townships the upper beds of the Wa- 

 verly are reduced in thickness, and the place is supplied by a heavy de- 

 posit of Carboniferous conglomerate, as in the adjacent districts of Pike 

 and Jackson counties. Single sections of considerable extent and in- 

 terest are found in Mount Logan, opposite Chillicothe ; in Sugar-Loaf 

 Mountain, three miles above ; in Rattlesnake Knob, Liberty township ; 

 and also in the highest points of Huntington and Franklin townships. 



But few points in the composition of the series demand consideration 

 here. Its economical value, to which reference has already been made, 

 lies principally in the fine development of the Buena Vista courses in 

 the south-eastern portion of the county, and especially in Franklin and 

 Jefferson townships. A great amount of most desirable and accessible 

 building stone is exposed in the first named township, on the western 

 bank of the Scioto River. The quarries of J. E. Higby are more largely 

 worked, and therefore more widely known, than any other. They are 

 located upon the line of the canal, which furnishes convenient and 

 cheap transportation. As in the Gregg quarry at Waverly, the stone is 

 all furnished by a single course, eight feet in thickness. The course can 

 easily be split into two courses of equal thickness. All of the quarry- 

 ing has thus far been done along the margins of the hills, where the 



