The Waverly Group in Ohio—-Herrick. 
95 
mill-stone grit or Coal-Measures conglomerate geologists long 
•ago erected an independent group called the Waverly or Cuya¬ 
hoga division. 
First supposed to be the stratigraphical equivalent of the 
Chemung in New York, it has of late been generally regarded as 
Carboniferous though no attempt was made to correlate its 
strata with any higher horizon than that of the Kinderhook. 
Prof. Alexander Winchell who has most extensively studied 
the Waverly approached it in a comparative way, having already 
•discovered its homologue in Michigan to be of composite nature, 
and subdivided it into the Huron and Marshall, the latter division 
being regarded as the specific equivalent of the fossiliferous 
upper portion of the Waverly. 
The correctness of this view was shown by the discovery of 
Prof. Newberry that the Erie shale is a real equivalent of at 
least a part of the Chemung or Portage.* In spite of sundry 
suggestions, however, up to the present time the consensus of 
geologists seems to be that the Ohio formations lying above the 
Erie, including Bedford shale and Berea grit, constitute a unit 
of the column and should be assigned to an age at least later 
than the top of the Chemung and essentially Carboniferous in 
fauna. To this Prof. Winchell is an exception, though only 
hypothetically suggesting that some portion of the lower 
Waverly may be an equivalent of his Michigan Huron group. 
It is not intended to here enter into a discusssion of the 
history of opinion of which Prof. Winchell has given an ad¬ 
mirable summary. 
The present writer was induced to enter upon an examina¬ 
tion of the Ohio Waverly rather from the stand-point of a biol¬ 
ogist than that of a geologist. The question prominently in 
mind throughout has been that relating to the vital conditions 
and changes indicated by the remains so poorly and ficklv pre¬ 
served in these sandy strata. The study has been of absorbing 
interest and the results are in some measure represented by the 
papers published during the past two years in the bulletin of 
Denison University. Incidentally a considerable number of 
*The following species have been collected by us from the Erie shales. 
Spircfer altus , S. disjunctus , S. prcematurus , Leiorhynchus mcsacostalu , 
Streptorhynchus chemungensis , Ortkis tioga , Terebratvla sp., lihynchonella 
.sappho , Leiopteria , sp., OrtJioceras bebryx , Productus (like lachrymosus.) 
