May, 1912.] A Study of Buckeye Lake and Vicinity. 527 
aquatic plants with fixed roots and submerged or floating leaves. 
Such plants as the pond lilies and lotus with large leaves and 
rhizomes add rapidly to the vegetal deposit and prepare the soil 
for sedges and other marsh plants which grow in quite shallow 
water. Sedges are well adapted to holding and adding to the soil 
and adding to the mat. Thus a sedge meadow was formed. The 
sedge mat in turn was succeeded by a sphagnum-cranberry bog. 
In such a mat the circulation of the water becomes impeded, gases 
set free in processes of decomposition collect and the mat is buoyed 
up so that it remains at or near the surface of the water. As the 
mat increased in thickness the surface finally rose above the water, 
became better aerated and the soil was prepared for shrubs and 
finally trees. The older portion of the bog was of course on the 
landward side. As the changes sketched were taking place in the 
bog it was constantly spreading out farther into the lake. 
When thru the conversion of the swamp into the reservoir, 
the water level rose rapidly, all the fixed plants were submerged 
and killed but the floating mat of the cranberry-sphagnum bog 
was buoyed up on the surface and escaped extermination. Cut 
off from the shore by the water it became an island. 
The presence of this bog presents conclusive evidence that the 
body of water in which it developed dates from the close of the 
glacial epoch. 
The map of the survey of 1801 contains a number of smaller 
swamps to the west and northwest of the “Big Swamp.” All of 
them have been drained and are either wood lots or are under 
cultivation. They vary in size from mere depressions in cultivated 
fields and meadows to 400 acres in area. Of these swamps the 
largest, known as “Bloody Run” or “Pigeon Roost” swamp, is 2 
miles east of Kirkersville and l /i mile south of the Ohio Electric 
railway. It is now almost wholly under cultivation, but 13 years 
ago it was a bog forest of soft maple, swamp ash and white elm 
with an undergrowth of willow and poison sumac. A drove well 
on one of the farms shows 1 7 feet of peat, then 3 feet of yellow clay, 
below this hard pan covering the gravel from which comes the 
water supply. These smaller swamps all lie at a lower elevation 
than the 900 foot level and as even the largest has a substratum of 
glacial clay they must have occupied depressions which were due 
to the inequalities of deposition. 
III. The location and extent of the Newark river valley 
from Newark westward to the Franklin county line. 
Frequent reference has been made to the existence of a broad 
and deep pre-glacial valley extending from Hanover westward to 
the Scioto Basin. Mr. M. C. Read was, I believe, the first to 
mention this valley. In the Report of the Geology of Licking 
county* Mr. Read writing of this pre-glacial channel says: “A 
9. Read, M. C. Geology of Licking County. O. Geol. Survey 3 : 348. 1878. 
