GREENE COUNTY. 681 
this one is composed of gneiss, conspicuously banded with rose-colored 
felspar. 
The peculiarity of this gravel bank consists, however, in none of the 
facts already stated, but in the order of arrangement of the materials, 
which are aggregated in all sorts of irregular masses, while the bed-lines 
of the sand and gravel are curiously twisted and contorted, their section 
sometimes showing them to accomplish two-thirds of the circumference of 
a circle. The only satisfactory explanation of these facts would seem to 
be found in the deposit of these materials from melting ice. An iceberg 
breaking loose from the northern water-shed of the State, and loaded 
with glacial detritus, if stranded and slowly melted here, might account 
for these peculiarities of structure. 
As to several of the other deposits referred to above, it is impossible for 
any one to examine them without feeling certain that they were sorted 
and sifted and arranged under water, and that their presence where we 
find them now is proof conclusive of the submergence of the country, at 
least to the elevations which they mark. The bank belonging to Daniel 
Jobe, Esq., and located near the intersection of the Grinnell pike with 
the Clifton and Oldtown pike, may be taken as a good representative of 
this class. 
These high-level or bank gravels of the county furnish an inexhaust- 
ible supply of excellent materials for road-making; and, under the wise 
State legislation of the last ten years upon this subject, the county may 
be said to have been lifted out of the mud. This work of improvement 
is sure to go on with the increasing wealth of the country, until every 
public road is changed from a bed of miry clay—which, in its natural 
state, it becomes for about one-third of the year—into a solid and civil- 
ized highway all the year through. 
The bottom lands of the county, in its western and south-western por- 
tions, are considerable. They do not, however, demand extended treat- 
‘ment here, agreeing as they do exactly with the similar areas already re- 
ported upon. They consist of first and second bottoms chiefly, the third 
terrace that appears in the lower reaches of the streams being either 
wanting or but indirectly shown here. 
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IV. SOILS. 
A brief discussion of the soils of the county will here find place. 
(a.) Origin. The soils of Greene county may be said to be derived 
from the Drift. There are small tracts, it is true, scattered through the 
county in which the bedded rock has lately formed the surface, and by 
