FAYETTE COUNTY. 437 
this limited area, may admit of doubt; but there are reasons for believ- 
ing that the surface was ence covered with a heavy Drift deposit. Insome 
places the seft material has been washed away, leaving large accumula- 
tions of sand and gravel; in other places, as in the level region between 
the East Fork of Tedd’s Fork and Blanchester, the material of the Drift 
was a finer sediment than is found in other places, and has not been re- 
moved or disturbed to such a degree as in other portions of the county, 
and, consequently, even if sand and gravel exist in it, such extensive 
beds of these substances as are found where the sediment had a different 
character or was subsequently washed in currents of water. 
The clays of the Drift are both blue and yellow, the former apparently 
prevailing in both counties, as shown in the excavations for wells. 
There was considerable variation in reports of the strata penetrated in 
sinking wells, but blue clay, or, as it is frequently called, blue mud, from 
its appearance, was uniformly found, but there was no uniformity in the 
thickness of it. Sometimes it is but a few feet in thickness, and in 
another place, not a mile distant, it is no less than forty feet thick. It 
is generally interstratified with sand and fine gravel, but sometimes no 
such stratification is seen. Water is found nearly everywhere within a 
very few feet of the surface of the earth, so that it is seldom excavations 
were carried further than from ten te twenty feet below the surface, and our 
Knowledge is limited of the material underlying to this slight extent. 
Near Washington, on the farm of Mr. D. Waters, the blue clay is inter- 
stratified with sand, while on that of Mr. Noah Evans, adjoining, there 
is a continuous deposit of the same material of forty feet in thickness, 
with gravel. This blue clay being impermeable to water, it is when 
beds of sand in it are reached that water is obtained, and usually in 
abundance. In some parts of our district, particularly these which are 
flat, there does not occur, within the usual range of the wells, much, if 
any, yellow clay. If it is found, it is just below the scil for from three 
to ten feet, where fine-grained blue clay invariably occurs, interstratified 
with sand. | : 
BOWLDERS. 
These are found scattered over the surface of both counties, and seem to 
belong above the blue clay deposit, rather thaninit. The largest bowlder, 
perhaps, which is found so far south in this State, is found in Clinton 
county, on the county infirmary farm, near Wilmington, and this lies on 
the fine-grained blue clay, upon which it would seem to have fallen by 
the washing away of the clay in which it was formerly imbedded, and 
which, at a higher level, lies near it on all sides. This bowlder contains 
about twelve hundred cubic feet, and weighs upwards of ninety tons. 
