OF DENISON UNIVERSITY. 
II3 
subsequent upheaval began the sea must have extended as far as to 
the northern highlands and, after gnawing away at their bases and 
storing up great reservoirs of material, there began the gradual depres- 
sion which spread them over the whole of the area. Time was then ripe 
for the opening of the Carboniferous period. The old descendants of 
Hamilton forms had done what they could, assisted by strays from the 
Chemung areas further east and having grown sadly out of fashion 
they were now subjected to nearly the same influences which were 
applied in the Chemung area. Littoral action and coarse sediments soon 
bore fruit in a fauna very like the later Chemung, though that period 
was now closed in New York. 
Thus grew up our Kinderhook or middle Waverly. But a tem- 
porary recession swept the waters backward depositing a shale con- 
taining a few descendants of the old Waverly-shale fauna with inter- 
spersed forms of Carboniferous types. It was now sub-carboniferous 
time and the elevation which next followed left its trail of sandy ma- 
terial with a fauna not unlike the Burlington but so hastily retreating 
as to build no limestone fortifications. But in the far south-east now 
these limestones gathered strength and with the next gain of Neptune 
flung a thin apron over the lap of southwestern Ohio into which 
stormy Coal-measure seas cast millions of tons of stones worn by the 
universal torrents from the northern shores. 
Of course this is a fabric of the imagination, but does it not explain 
in some measure rationally the complicated problem of the Waverly ? 
There can be little doubt that the materials of middle Waverly 
sandstone and conglomerate were carried by rivers or the like. The 
epoch of coal-measure conglomerate we have also spoken of as a tor- 
rent period. On what grounds ? ist. The accumulation of tree 
trunks of carboniferous aspect. 2nd. The nature of the deposits. 
3rd. The fickle distribution of the materials. 4th. The combination 
of new and old material in its make-up, etc. How is the sudden and 
simultaneous advent of this rainy season explained ? Did we not hear 
but yesterday that the axis of mother earth took a tilt northward dis- 
turbing all conditions ? May not the inauguration of this change have 
been a gusty epoch? Incidentally we have showed how the 
composite character of the upper part of the Cuyahoga shale is to be 
understood. 
It is not intended to carry out this speculation so far as to formu- 
late an hypothesis. To the experienced student the few hints offered 
