FAYETTE COUNTY. 445, 
tion. The exact locality where the greatest thickness can be observed 
ison the Washington and Leesburg road, west of Rattlesnake Creek— 
the hill in the rear of the school-house has an exposure near the summit. 
Going from the Falls of Rattlesnake, near Monroe, in Highland county, 
against the stream, after leaving behind the Niagara at the Falls, and 
some distance above, the next stone in position is the Lower Helderberg. 
The fine building stone of Lexington and Greenfield belongs to the 
lower strata of the Water-Lime. The same quality of stone has not 
been found on the Rattlesnake ; whether it occurs there or not remains 
to be seen. Within the Fayette county line, along the creek, from one 
hundred to one hundred and twenty-five feet in perpendicular measure- 
ment are found. In the lower strata of this exposure numerous bivalvu- 
lar mollusks were obtained which I have not identified. On Paint Creek, 
near Smith’s Mill, a profusion of a small mollusk, in a broken and con- 
fused condition, was noticed. These I did not find on Rattlesnake. In the 
higher strata no organic remains were obtained. This stone, through the 
entire one hundred and twenty-five feet, maintained strikingly the same 
characteristics. When exposed to the air in masonry, this stone resists 
the weathering influences on the surface, but is lable to shell off and actu- 
ally becomes fissured, through and through, until massive blocks become 
nothing more than a tottering collection of loose splinters and fragments. 
This stone is not now approved as material for bridge abutments or 
foundation walls. If a slab from eight inches to a foot in thickness ig 
struck a few smart blows with a hand hammer, it not only fractures 
through and through, but breaks into pieces often not more than one or 
two inches in any dimension. The fracture is, in every instance, con- 
choidal. The stone is of an uniform texture, new fractures having a 
velvety appearance, with a fresh, brown color. It has been burned into 
lime, but I could not ascertain anything definite as to its quality. As 
the stone contains lime and alumina, there may be some portions of it 
adapted to the manufacture of hydraulic lime. Some of the higher 
strata resemble the Rittenhouse stone in the northern part of Ross 
county, which makes a good quality of water-lime. The striated rock 
on Paint Creek, near Smart’s Mill, spoken of heretofore, is referred to 
this formation as the equivalent of that on Rattlesnake. There does 
not occur any more bedded rock on Rattlesnake above this development 
not referred to. But above the exposures near Smart’s Mill, on Paint 
Creek, occur strata successively as one ascends the stream. In fact, all 
the bedded rock which occurs in Fayette coumty, except a limited ex- 
posure on Deer Creek, in the extreme eastern part of the county, is rep- 
resented in that which is encountered on Paint Creek from near the 
