462 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
and far down it, strewing its beaches with these materials so useful to 
man. Perhaps no water-course in the State has borne so much sand and 
gravel along its course and lodged it in places where it is accessible to 
man. This is a striking peculiarity of the Miami River; its broad 
terraces are underlain with a bed of the cleanest, finest gravel for road- 
making in-quantities practically inexhaustible. I have but to cite the 
immense deposits beneath the alluvium at Middletown, on both sides of 
the river, at Hamilton, and indeed along its whole course, culminating 
in that bed at Harrison Junction, cut and exposed by the Indianopolis 
and Cincinnati Railroad. 
Bowlders —While the transported rocks do not constitute a marked 
feature in Shelby county, still there are many of them; but as Miami 
county contains so much greater a proportion, they will receive special 
attention in the account of that county. The largest bowlder, however, 
that has yet come under my observation in the State hes near the rail- 
road, one mile east of Sidney. It contains twelve hundred and fifty cubic 
feet, and weighs about one hundred and three tons. 
Human remains.—As in other counties, in nearly every instance where 
gravel beds have been opened to obtain gravel for road making, skeleton 
remains of human beings have been discovered. They lie invariably 
near the surface of the ground, and soon crumble to dust when exposed — 
to the influence of the atmosphere. Careful observations do not seem 
generally to have been made as to the mode of placing the body in the 
earth, but enough was learned to induce the belief that no one custom of 
sepulture was invariably adhered to. It is nota little singular that these 
dry places were chosen as places of interment for the dead of that race, 
whichever it was, whose dead are found decaying in them. With.im- 
perfect means for opening graves for their dead in the earth, it is per- 
haps not unreasonable to suppose that they buried their dead in the 
eravel because, with their tools, the task was more easily effected in such 
localities than in the harder clay. This supposition seems to derive force 
from the appearance of carelessness in these interments. The bodies are 
thrust in a hole feet feremost, and forced into a small space. It is very 
seldom that trinkets were buried with these dead, though sometimes it 
is the case. But we must notice that keenness of observation, which 
detected, so unerringly, the hidden beds of gravel, which, though needed, 
were in many instances entirely unsuspected by those who ploughed and 
reapt above them, until the exigencies of road-making caused more 
thorough search to be made by those who searched without certain indi- 
cations, by tentative methods, and often without hope of success. With 
the forests cleared away, and the soil under cultivation, and often dug into 
