234 
The Ohio Naturalist. 
[Vol. VIII, No. 3, 
Bearing on .4 rchaeology. There has been a tendency in the past 
to explain formations of the esker type as the work of Indians or 
Mound Builders, 10 an error not without justification. Evidence 
of design in the Dayton ridges is patent to the unitiated. They 
suggest an immense fortification composed of lines of earth¬ 
works; the knolls serving as lookout and signal stations, gaps for 
ingress and egress, and short connecting embankments as road¬ 
ways from ridge to ridge. Several references are made in local 
histories 11 to the work of Mound Builders found in what is now 
Calvary Cemetery (C. C., Fig. 1). Of these the following quo¬ 
tation is the most comprehensive:—“South of Dayton on a hill 
one hundred and sixty feet high is a fort enclosing twenty-four 
acres. The gateway on the south is covered in the interior by a 
ditch twenty feet wide and seven hundred feet long. On the 
northern line of embankment is a small mound from the top of 
which a full view of the country for a long distance up and down 
the river may be obtained.” 1 ' Other isolated portions are ex¬ 
plained similarly by residents. 
Such explanations are to be doubted as few if any more than 
the number of Indian relics normal to this section of Ohio are 
found. Even admitting the archaeOlogic suppositions, the 
accredited Indian work constitutes so little of the region studied, 
with but trilling interference to the general plan, that it may be 
disregarded. That no large portion can be of human construc¬ 
tion is apparent not alone from the size of the formation, but 
from the evidence of assorted material in numerous cuts. 
Topographic Relations. Eskers differ in their relations to the 
topography of the area on which they rest, but according to 
Chamberlin and Salisbury they were probably most frequently 
made by streams flowing about “parallel to the direction of the 
ice movement.” 13 The same writers also suppose the most 
favorable position for their formation to be “near the edge of 
the ice during the time of its maximum extension or retreat.” 14 
It is possible that the topography of the Dayton area offers 
the best explanation, on a sub-glacial hypothesis, for the origin 
of these local eskers. Dayton lies in a large valley (Fig. 1) 
formed by the junction of the Stillwater and Mad Rivers and 
Wolf Creek with the Great Miami River. The enclosing rock¬ 
bearing hills rise about 200 feet above the flood plain. The basin 
is filled with a varying depth of debris exceeding in places 200 
feet. 15 The maximum width of the valley is about six miles. To 
the southward beyond the junctions the valley narrows to about 
10. G. H. Stone, loc. cit., p. 35. 
11. History of Montgomery County, Ohio, (1882), p. 216. 
12. Quotation in “History of Dayton,” (1889), p. 10, from J. P. McLean’s work* 
“The Mound Builders.” 
13. loc. cit., p. 376. 
14. Ibid, p. 374. 
15. F. Leverett, loc. cit.., p. 361. 
