GKEENE COUNTY. 681 



this one is composed of gneiss, conspicuously banded with rose-colored 

 felspar. 



The peculiarity of this gravel bank consists, however, in none of the 

 facts already stated, but in the order of arrangement of the materials, 

 which are aggregated in all sorts of irregular masses, while the bed-lines 

 of the sand and gravel are curiously twisted and contorted, their section 

 sometimes showing them to accomplish two-thirds of the circumference of 

 a circle. The only satisfactory explanation of these facts would seem to 

 be found in the deposit of these materials from melting ice. An iceberg 

 breaking loose from the northern water-shed of the State, and loaded 

 with glacial detritus, if stranded and slowly melted here, might account 

 for these peculiarities of structure. 



As to several of the other deposits referred to above, it is impossible for 

 any one to examine them without feeling certain that they were sorted 

 and sifted and arranged under water, and that their presence where we 

 find them now is proof conclusive of the submergence of the country, at 

 least to the elevations which they mark. The bank belonging to Daniel 

 Jobe, Esq., and located near the intersection of the Grinnell pike with 

 the Clifton and Oldtown pike, may be taken as a good representative of 

 this class. 



These high-level or bank gravels of the county furnish an inexhaust- 

 ible supply of excellent materials for road-making; and, under the wise 

 State legislation of the last ten years upon this subject, the county may 

 be said to have been lifted out of the mud. This work of improvement 

 is sure to go on with the increasing wealth of the country, until every 

 public road is changed from a bed of miry clay— which, in its natural 

 state, it becomes for about one-third of the year— into a solid and civil- 

 ized highway all the year through. 



The bottom lands of the county, in its western and south-western por- 

 tions, are considerable. They do not, however, demand extended treat- 

 ment here, agreeing as they do exactly with the similar areas already re- 

 ported upon They consist of first and second bottoms chiefly, the third 

 terrace that appears in the lower reaches of the streams being either 

 wanting or but indirectly shown here* 



IV. SOILS. 



A brief discussion of the soils of the county will here find place. _ 

 (a ) Origin. The soils of Greene county may be said to be derived 

 from the Drift. There are small tracts, it is true, scattered through the 

 county in which the bedded rock has lately formed the surface, and by 



