ROSS COUNTY. | 647 
cient ocean. The few square feet exposed in the bank opposite Ferneau’s 
Mill have already yielded a newcrinoid belonging the genus Melocrinus 
and described by Prof. Whitfield in Vol. II. of the Ohio Paleontology; a 
téntaculite, identified by Prof. Whitfield as Tentaculites fissurella, and 
which is found:at the east in the Marcellus slate; and several obscure 
and undetermined corals. Vegetable remains are also sometimes met 
with in the same locality. A calamite, several feet in length, was found 
at the center of a large concretion, and a prostrate tree, the bark of 
which had been converted into coal, was traced by Mr. Bergen, assistant 
in the survey of the county, for thirty feet over an exposed layer of 
shale. 
This field is commended to the attention of local geologists as well 
worthy of careful exploration. Such an exploration is almost sure to be . 
rewarded by the discovery of new species of fossils. 
The exposures of the slates along the course of Paint Creek are unsur- 
passed. The whole series, except fifty or sixty feet of the lowermost 
beds, is shown in two nearly vertical sections—the first one occurring at 
the well-known locality, Copperas Mountain, and the second at the 
equally well-known but less accessible locality, the Alum Cliffs. Cop- 
peras Mountain is situated three miles east of Bainbridge. The Alum 
Cliffs are five miles due west of Chillicothe. 
Paint Creek washes with the full force of its current the foot of the 
slate hill known as Copperas Mountain, and thus secures a constant ex- 
posure of the formation in a nearly vertical wall one hundred and fifty 
feet in height. The hill rises to a height of five hundred and fifty feet, 
so that the whole thickness of the slates is contained in it, and much be- 
sides; but the uppermost one hundred and twenty-five feet of the forma- 
tion are not shown as distinctly as the lower portions. 
At the Alum Cliffs section, which is the new valley of Paint Creek, to 
which reference has already been made, the uppermost beds are shown in 
a wall very nearly vertical to an extent at least of one hundred feet. 
The Huron shales are here covered by the Waverly shales and the Wa- 
verly quarries, and the section is for the most part closed by the Waverly 
black slates. The upper beds of the division are shown with great dis- 
tinctness within the limits of the city of Chillicothe, and upon all sides 
of it. | 
The concretions by which the Huron shales are every where character- 
ized occur mainly in the lowermost one hundred feet. Many of them 
possess remarkable symmetry. The smaller ones frequently consist of 
sulphuret of iron. The larger ones have either organic or crystalline 
nuclei, and in far the larger number of instances the latter. 
