28 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



tribution to the present report. All the layers, and especially the upper 

 ones, are generally ripple-marked. In many instances, every sheet, for 

 many successive feet, is marked with the most symmetrical sculpturings 

 of this sort. 



This stratum, thus definitely characterized and bounded, received 

 the name of the Waverly shale in the reports of the second Geological 

 Survey for southern Ohio, but in northern Ohio, it was named by New- 

 berry the Bedford shale, the equivalence of the strata not being at that 

 time recognized. The latter name deserves to be universally accepted, 

 being applied to a perfectly distinct and homogeneous formation. The 

 stratum has precisely the same boundaries in northern that it has in 

 southern Ohio, viz. the top of the great black shale and the Berea grit, 

 and, in the main, precisely the same characteristics throughout its whole 

 extent. The description of the stratum at Waverly applies to it at every 

 other point, except that in northern Ohio at a few localities, and espe- 

 cially about Cleveland, there are fifteen to twenty feet of valuable stone 

 included in it. This stone is even-bedded, very strong and durable and 

 it supplies a large quantity of flaggings, caps and sills of the best grade. 

 It is known as the East Cleveland, Euclid and Independence blue stone. 

 In northern Ohio more of the Bedford formation is red colored than in 

 southern, and here it is the top of the formation, rather than the bottom 

 that is thus marked. In the lower beds of the Bedford shale, fossils are, 

 in northern Ohio, at a few points, abundant. They are of pronounced 

 Sub-carboniferous character according to Newberry's determinations, but 

 Professor Herrick inclines to place them somewhat lower in the scale. 

 None of these fossils have been reported south of the lake shore, but the 

 stratigraphical relations of the shale are so clear and its lithological char- 

 acteristics so persistent and pronounced, that there is not a stratum in 

 our geological column that can be followed across the state in more 

 easily demonstrated identity than this. 



11<£. The Berea Grit. 



We have reached in our review the Berea grit, the second element 

 of the Waverly series, and not only the most important member of the 

 series, but by far the most important single stratum in the entire geolog- 

 ical column of Ohio. Its economic value above ground is great, but it 

 is greater below. In its outcrops it is a source of the finest building 

 stone and the best grindstone grit of the country, and when it dips be- 

 neath the surface it becomes the repository of invaluable supplies of 

 petroleum, gas and salt-water. Its persistence as a stratum is phenome- 

 nal. Seldom reaching a thickness of fifty feet, its proved area in Ohio 

 above ground and below, is scarcely less than 15,000 square miles, and 

 beyond the boundaries of Ohio it appears to extend with continuity and 

 strength unbroken into at least four other adjacent states. In the 



