614 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
pyrites, and is mainly of the variety which is called blue limestone. 
Some of it will receive a tolerably fair polish, and when thus treated it 
has a prettily-mottled structure, or a gray and white-banded structure, 
according as the blocks are polished upon a plane parallel or perpendicu- 
lar to the stratification. 
The Dayton lhmestone is an evenly-bedded, massive, gray carbonate 
of lime, which is sparingly charged with fossils, and which is quarried 
from the very lowermost courses of the Niagara formation. It is found 
in firm, heavy courses that are at times 10 feet in thickness, though 
often very much less. So-called cutting stone is obtained from these 
beds. This term ‘cutting stone” is generally employed to designate 
stone which comes out in large blocks suitable for steps, platforms, ete. 
Cutting stone is sharply distinguished from building stones in all the 
quarries of western Ohio, and brings several times the price per cubic 
foot of the latter. The thinner and inferior strata serve a great divers- 
ity of uses. 
Although stone of excellent quality occurs in various portions of 
Montgomery and Greene counties, the market has been thus far largely 
supplied by the quarries situated in the neighborhood of Dayton. Five 
quarries have there been opened in a belt which lies a mile and a half 
east of the town, whose sections exhibit 5 feet of the so-called cutting 
stone, overlaid by from 10 to 18 feet of drift. They produce all kinds of 
building stone (graded in from three to six grades), which is mainly sent 
to Dayton and to Cincinnati. The court-house and some of the churches 
in Dayton were constructed of this stone. 
Another quarry in this same horizon, situated 73 miles north of 
Dayton, has only 5 feet of drift to be removed; but, on the other hand, 
the thickness of the stratum of cutting stone is least in this quarry. 
The court-house at Sidney, Ohio, is built of this stone. | 
At a quarry operated 6 miles east of Dayton the deposit consists of 
4 feet of cutting stone, overlaid by 6 feet of a yellow-colored stone, the 
whole capped by 9 feet of drift. Two miles farther to the east lies a 
quarry which contains 4 feet of cutting stone overlaid by 3 feet of drift. 
The last two quarries are in Greene county. 
Quarries have been opened in the same stratum of stone in the 
neighborhood of Xenia, and these have been widely known and exten- 
sively worked. This is in fact one of the three localities to which the 
contracts for the foundations of large works in Cincinnati were formerly 
confined, the specifications calling for Xenia, Centerville, or Dayton 
