82 



L I M E S T 0 N E S OF RED C ED A II, 



Ohio, yet, for a provident people, it contains timber sufficient for fuel, fencing, and 

 building purposes. And the absence of continuous forests is well repaid by the 

 facility with which the settler in the prairie can, in a few years, reduce an extensive 

 farm to excellent order ; aided, as in these level meadow-lands he has an opportu- 

 nity to be, in his sowing and harvesting operations, by labour-saving machinery.* 



SECTION VI. 



ITS LOCAL DETAILS. 



While awaiting, in the spring of 1849, the arrival of a voyageur to take the 

 place of the man Gobert, who died of cholera, at Muscatine, on the 17th of May, 

 I determined to employ the time in examining the principal quarries and rock- 

 exposures in the vicinity of the Red Cedar River, chiefly with a view to ascertain 

 whether any of the limestones which reach the surface in that section of country 

 could be referred to the carboniferous or sub-carboniferous groups, or whether the 

 coal-measures of Muscatine County abut immediately on the Devonian strata. 



The result of this investigation is as follows : — 



On leaving the Mississippi, and proceeding in a northerly course for two or three 

 miles, there is a change in the soil after passing the principal branch of Mud 

 Creek; and on Section 27, Township 79 north, Range 2 west, of the 5th Principal 

 Meridian, on the east bank of Sugar Creek, ledges of rugged magnesian limestone 

 rise twelve feet above the water-level at the foot of a dam. In this rock I found 

 no well-defined fossils ; but the imperfect Terebratulce and Pentameri, as well as the 

 lithological character, leave little doubt that it belongs to the Upper Silurian epoch. 

 This inference was confirmed by observations on the opposite side of the same 

 stream, where these magnesian beds are at an elevation of from fifteen to twenty 

 feet, and have resting on them from fifteen to twenty feet of a white, brecciated, 

 close-textured limestone, the extension of the beds of the Upper or Rock Island 

 Rapids of the Mississippi River; at which locality the superior beds contain 

 Terebratula reticularis, T. aspera, Spirifer euruteines, Orthis resupinata, and Favosites 

 spongiies. 



In juxtaposition with these calcareous beds, in a hollow, not thirty paces from 

 Sugar Creek, and at an elevation of twenty-five feet above the creek, a light, buff, 

 banded freestone, an outlier of the coal formation, crops out. On Section 15, 

 Township 79 north, Range 2 west, on the same creek, at Freeman's Quarry, are 

 solid ledges of magnesian limestone, to the height of thirty feet. At this locality, 

 no white limestone was observed overlying it ; only some loose pieces of freestone 

 are scattered on the slopes. In some of the slabs of magnesian limestone lying in 

 the quarry are casts of CyatlwphyUce, a small Terebratula, and an Orthis, not suffi- 

 ciently well preserved to make out the species. At Floyd's Mill, on the same 

 creek, on Section 14, Township 80 north, Range 3 west, is a similar rock, having, 

 however, a more earthy and arenaceous appearance, and sometimes banded. There 

 * Time did not permit a minute analysis of the Red Cedar soils. 



