OF DENISON UNIVERSITY. 
23 
that an elevation of the coast at the close of the Waverly period 
caused the recession of the water, and that the period occupied at the 
west by the deposition of some 550 feet of sediments was not a time 
of rock formation in centraLOhio. The results of close study of the 
lowest coal-measure conglomerate has unexpectedly indicated the con- 
trary. While engaged in collecting samples of the quartz pebbles 
forming the bulk of this conglomerate eight miles northeast of Newark, 
a large number of fragments of limestone were also broken out.* 
These are angular and. though very badly decomposed, show that they 
could not have been derived from a distance, as the quartz must have 
been in order to free itself so fully of the softer, including country rock, 
and acquire its rounded form, and, moreover, they contained a few fos- 
sils which can only be referred to the age of the Chester or St. Louis 
Group. These conglomerates are full of the impressions of Lepidoden- 
drids and Catamites and seem to have been torn from their places by tor- 
rents which carried from the mountains to the north their freight of 
coarser and finer material, much of it being of a metamorphic and ig- 
neous nature. The Chester limestone must at that time have been 
more or less firmly consolidated, perhaps in the form of clods of limy 
clay, and has preserved identifiable remains to tell the story. Thus 
the same coarse conglomerate tells us that a mighty river flowed into 
the coal-measure ocean from a region to the north, exposing igneous 
and metamorphic (partly granitic) rock, that it flowed through a region 
covered by deposits of St. Louis or Chester age, thus showing that a 
large series supposed to be absent in this part of the state was simply 
■obliterated by erosion. Such a chain of argument indicates what pos- 
sibilities are open to a more careful study of limited areas. The fos- 
sils referred to are figured beyond, in connection with those of the 
Chester further south. 
We now pass to the Waverly proper. This may be divided into 
three well-marked groups which present us with a carboniferous, a 
Waverly, and a Devonian facies respectively. The lower division 
-ought probably to be referred uncompromisingly to the Devonian, the 
second, less obviously Devonian, still contains a fair proportion of 
<lhemung fossils, while the upper series can be unhesitatingly called 
sub-carboniferous. These zones are marked off, as already hinted, by 
-'■'The Ohio geologists have observed the same fact in other parts of the state, 
but a different interpretation has been offered. 
