462 | GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
of the broad and fertile intervales of the streams that now traverse the 
valleys or of the still more desirable areas that were the valleys of an 
earlier epoch, but which are now deserted by streams, and which are 
evenly filled with the beds of the later drift, together with uplands rising 
by gentle slopes to an altitude of four to five hundred feet above the river, 
and whose surfaces are scarcely less productive than the areas first named. 
The soil of all this district consists, in great measure, of decomposed 
limestone-gravel, and exhibits every excellence of limestone land. A 
single area may be noted here as furnishing a unique line of facts in the 
native vegetation of the county. A,chestnut grove is to be found in the 
south east corner of Union township, near Pisgah Church. It is well 
known that the chestnut confines itself generally to the slate and sand- 
stone soils of the county. Indeed, the boundary between the slates and 
the limestones in south-western Ohio could be defined with satisfactory 
precision by noting the line where the chestnuts begin as one passes 
eastward. Isolated trees are known in the gravels and sands of lime- 
stone districts, it is true, but they are very rare. Dr. John A. Warder 
has called attention to one growing near Milford, in the Little Miami 
Valley, and another is known in Greene county, but in the area to which 
attention is now invited, a forest growth in which the chestnut is a large 
element, is found. The trees have attained a diameter of four feet in 
some instances and in others stumps, long dead, are seen with large trees © 
growing from them. The tree fruits well here and reproduces itself 
abundantly. Chestnuts (the fruit) were sold to the amount of forty dol- 
lars from a single farm three years ago. 
The soil does not betray any peculiarities upon a superficial view, but 
the wells in the vicinity all show a great deposit of yellow sand beneath 
the surface here. Many fruitless attempts to secure wells in this neigh- 
borhood are on record, the sand proving to be a quicksand, and caving in 
so rapidly as to frustrate the sinking of the shaft to water. It has been 
thought that the sand would prove to be a moulding sand, but no trials 
of it have been made. The bed of sand is anomalous, and it is interest- 
ing to note that the native forest growth which covers it is also excep- 
tional. There are no peculiarities in the remaining drift soils of the 
county that deserve special mention. 
The poorest of them, as those covering the uplands of the northern and 
and western townships, if handled with skill and subjected to a rational 
system of agriculture, would take high rank when compared with even 
the strongest lands of the Atlantic border. Measured against the fruitful 
valleys and slopes just mentioned, and tilled under a system which even 
