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GREENE COUNTY. 695 
separated points is due to the geological structure which they have in 
common. The blocky limestones which underlie them all, taken in con- 
nection with the arrangements of well and cess-pool that ordinarily pre- 
vail, renders not only possible, but, in many cases, necessary, the defile- 
ment of drinking water with the products of disease. 
There are two village sites in Greene county which, however attractive 
and advantageous in other respects, must be considered as positively 
unsafe with respect to their natural water-supply. The village sites re- 
ferred to are those of Yellow Springs and Clifton. 
In the former the danger of contaminated wells is rendered less from 
the fact that the dwellings are so widely separated from each other, but 
a very free connection between the privy vault and well of the same 
premises must certainly exist in many instances. Happily, on account 
of the trouble and expense of getting wells, cisterns have been a large 
dependence of the village from the first, and it is not known that any’ 
outbreak of disease can be traced to contaminated drinking water, but it 
cannot be amiss to call attention to the elements of danger involved. 
The village of Clifton, unfortunately, has not as good a record. No 
town of Ohio suffered more severely, in:proportion to its population, from — 
the cholera epidemic of 1849, than this little village. To any one ac- 
quainted with its geological structure, and at the same time with the 
results of modern inquiries in regard to the distribution of cholera, the 
suspicion that the water-supply was largely connected with the fatality 
of the disease cannot ‘be repressed, and the history of the spread of the 
pestilence points to the same cause. | 
The village is located on the north bank of the Little Miami River, 
which here occupies a deep and narrow gorge, wrought out of the Niagara 
limestone, as has been before stated. For forty or fifty rods back from 
the gorge there is but a shallow earthy covering of the rock, but beyond 
this the Drift increases in thickness until it is not less than fifty or 
seventy-five feet in depth. The village is mainly built upon the first 
named tract, but quite a number of dwellings are located on the higher 
ground. The latter derive their water-supply from the ordinary Drift 
wells of the country, while in the closer-built portions of the village 
on the low ground the wells descend from filteen to twenty-five feet into 
the rock, probably deriving their water from the same horizon, viz., the 
summit of the Springfield division of the limestone. 
The cholera was confined to the lower part of the village, not a single 
ease occurring in the higher eround. The disease made its appearance 
in the hotel or village tavern, a stranger who came into the village in 
the evening being attacked in the night and dying the next morning. 
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