CHAPTER LXXXII. 
REPORT ON THE GEOLOGY OF HOLMES COUNTY. 
IB VE Who Oo IRIRAID 
TOPOGRAPHY. 
Holmes county is divided into two nearly equal parts by the valley of 
the Killbuck, an alluvial water-plain, above the buried channel of an 
ancient river, now filled with from one hundred to two hundred feet of 
Drift material. On each side of the valley the hills rise gradually toa 
height of from four hundred to five hundred feet, and then descend as 
gradually on the east, toward the valley of the Tuscarawas, and rather 
abruptly on the west to the valley of the Mohican. Innumerable creeks. 
and rivulets emptying into these streams, interlocked in the most irregu- 
lar manner, cover the face of the county, and uniting into larger streams 
flow through the narrow, alluvia! valleys or deep, rocky gorges, which 
separate the high hillsthat compose the greater part of the surface. The 
same contrast between the members of the ancient and modern river- 
systems is observed here as in the counties heretofore described. The 
first flowing in mederately wide valleys on a muddy or gravelly bottom— 
the gravel composed largely cf foreign material—and resting on a thick: 
deposit of Drift, the latter flowing in narrow, rock gorges, generally, with 
a rocky bottom, and containing, almost exclusively, the debris of the 
local rocks. The constant succession of hills and ravines exhibits con- 
tinuous exposures of all the rocks of the Lower Coal Measures, and in no 
part of the State can their character and relations be more satisfactorily 
studied. 
SOIL. 
The soil is generally a light, friable, calcareous loam, in the valleys, 
rich in vegetable matter, and everywhere well adapted to the growth of 
wheat. On some of the hills the surface is so thickly covered with rock 
fragments, the debris of the coal sandstone, as to be entirely unfitted for 
cultivation, but a dense forest covers these rocky slopes, and the soil was 
originally everywhere rich. When the growth of the best varieties of 
timber is properly encouraged, these rock-covered hills are an advantage 
