MEDINA COUNTY. 367 
torrent that filled the valley, in the bottom of which it now so quietly 
flows. The passage of glaciers also helped to break up the rock and wear 
away the softer, looser portions, leaving additional evidences in the 
groovings of the surface. 
HOMER TOWNSHIP. 
The south-western township in Medinacounty is named Homer. The 
rolling surface is cut through the whole length of the township by one 
_ of the fountain streams of Black River, affording some fine exposures of 
Cuyahoga shale. The bluffs are thirty feet high in some places, and the 
opportunity of tracing out the succession of the layers is very good. The 
rock is a soft gray shale with interspersed layers of hard sandy shale, of 
a lighter color. The latter 1s occasionally worked out of the river bed 
and used for foundation stone for bridges, etc.; but it is too hard to be cut 
well, and long weathering will cause it to disintegrate or split into thin 
slabs. Concretions of iron are found in the shale of this township as in 
others, but the lime concretions are infrequent. No good fossil speci- 
mens were obtained here, the shale being too soft to hold the forms. 
Galena has been found in Homer, and a few parties, more sanguine 
than wise, have taken lea*es of land for lead-mining purposes. 
HARRISVILLE TOWNSHIP. 
The land of Harrisville township is somewhat rolling, and affords a 
variety of soils. In some parts the land is clayey, and in others slightly 
sandy. 
Peat covers over two thousand acres in thistownship. One-half of this 
territory has the deposit not over eight~en inches deep, the underlying 
clay being heavy, yet light colored. The average depth of the peat on 
one thousand acres is about five feet. Most of the western and southern 
parts of this Harrisville marsh have been plowed. The bed rock is 
twelve to eighteen feet below the surface of the marsh. The land can be 
shaken by jumping upon it, although cattle go all over it. The digging 
of ditches has revealed quantities of shells, but no large fossils, so far as 
could be learned 
Rruilroad levels were run in 1853, between Wooster and Grafton, by Mr. 
W EK. Ferguson, Engineer. The extreme elevation of the road, as it was 
surveyed through the marsh, was three hundred and forty and three- 
tenths feet above Lake Erie. The road was to have run west of the vil- 
lage of Lodi, and the elevation there was three hundred and thirty-six 
feet above Lake Erie. This would give the surface at the town-pump an 
altitude of about three hundred and fifty feet. 
