464 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
mote antiquity could not be ascribed to these remains of human art and 
industry from anything in their situation. In the course of a few cen- 
turies the rivers in the secular oscillations which they execute from bank 
to bank, a result of laws in constant operation, must disturb and redis- 
tribute, by the constant eating away of the bank, the whole of the allu- 
vial deposit near its own level. Nothing is more constant, nothing more 
certain than the wear of an abrupt alluvial bank during high water, 
with a regularity which admits of calculation. The great number of 
such stone-tool manufactories, which are now disclosed along the course 
of the Ohio River, afford evidence that their age was not far back in gray 
antiquity. A few banks that are now crumbling might have escaped 
the erosion of the surging waters for a very long period; but it is in- 
credible that so many as are now delivering up their relics of human art, 
their evidences of human industry and ingenuity, places in which for 
the first time since the ancient workman finally laid down his tools or 
kindled his fire upon his well-made hearth of bowlder pebbles, for the 
last time, should have escaped for indefinite ages just such action of the 
water as they are now yielding to. 
Remains of Hatinct Animals.—A few bones of animals not now found in 
the State—as a few teeth of the beaver, and portions of the antlers of 
ene or two elks, and some reports of discoveries of mammoth or mas- 
todon remains—were all that came tomy knowledge of fossils of this 
character. We may be prepared to hear of the discovery of such fossils 
in the peat beds, if they are ever much worked. Peat seems to possess 
the property of preserving the bodies of animals which become mired 
in it. 
BEDDED STONE. | 
We come now to speak of the underlying consolidated strata which 
are exposed within the county. The only bedded stone found within 
Shelby county, lies in a narrow strip bordering the river, extending from 
the southern boundary of the county to within a mile of the town of 
Sidney. From the county line to a locality known as Boggs’ Mill, 
wherever stone is seen zn setu, it belongs to the formation called, by geol- 
ogists, the Clinton. It is the stone which immediately underlies the 
building stone in the suburbs of Piqua, in Miami county, and which is 
burned into lime so extensively just south of that town. It possesses, in 
the locality in Shelby county referred to, ali the characteristics by which 
the stone of this formation is so surely detected. The physical charac- 
teristics of being unevenly bedded, highly crystallized, of sandy texture, 
and of a rust color from the presence of iron, and, withal, a hard stone, 
here show themselves. The fossils common to the Clinton in the vicin- 
