able quantity at 1,581 feet, and its presence discouraged a much deeper descent. A heavy black oil was found in small amount in the well. There was an accumulation of it to the extent of perhaps 40 feet in the pocket at one time. Its source was not far from the point at which the gas was found. As has been stated earlier, black oil was also found at 718 feet in the well.

The record of the well, as published at the time, was substantially as follows, a few terms being replaced :

This record is represented in the accompanying diagram.

The well was cased at 257 feet, and no water entered thereafter in quantity until a depth of 1581 feet was reached. In the upper limestone, saline and sulphurous water was found at several different levels. The cost of the well was $3,200.00.

By analysis of this record, the following facts appear, viz., (1) the bedded rock was struck at a depth of eight feet; (2) there was a thickness of 237 feet of limestone in a practically continuous body; (3) below this, a body of shales, blue, red, gray and brown or black successively, was found, 847 feet in thickness; (4) a solid limestone was next found, which, beginning at 1,092 feet, held on to the bottom of the well.

This lower limestone was divided by the drillers into several sections as indicated above, but there was no urgent ground for such divisions. The limestone really constitutes a single stratum, the thickness of which was found in the well section to be 556 feet, the bottom of it being not yet reached. Only minor changes in color and composition were noted in descending.

The main stock of gas was found in the uppermost portion of this great stratum.

The record can be still further reduced by writing it thus:

The reference of the various strata penetrated in drilling to their proper places in the geological column, does not prove to be a difficult task. The only uncertainty pertaining to it is in fixing the limits of the several strata. This, it is not always possible to do with exactness.

Fortunately, Mr. Eckels, one of the originators of the company, was able to give a great deal of time and attention to the work of securing samples of the drillings of this first well at frequent intervals, and especially at all the marked changes. These well-authenticated samples were kindly turned over to the State Geological Survey for study and analysis, and by means of them, combined with the study of drillings subsequently obtained from other Findlay wells and from other localities, a very satisfactory account can be given of that portion of our geological scale that is included in the well records.

The uppermost limestone in which the drilling begins, proves to be the Niagara limestone, and the horizon at which it is struck is near the uppermost portion of this series. The rock is quarried largely in the immediate neighborhood, and the Waterlime or Lower Helderberg series is also found and quarried near by. The 237 feet referred to the upper limestone does not, however, prove to be a single stratum. There is a thin bed of very white and fine-grained clay occurring in this series that always attracts the attention of the drillers, although it does not always find a place on the record. It is but two feet thick, according to the newspaper record quoted above, but this measurement is wrongly given. It is ten feet thick in this well, and is generally more. It is tough and waxy, and the tools are sometimes obstructed by it. It generally contains some of the smaller fossils of the formation. In all respects, it agrees in character with the thin stratum of white clay with which the Clinton limestone is terminated in southern Ohio. Its outcrop is especially well seen in the vicinity of Dayton, marking the exact boundary between the Clinton and Niagara divisions there. It seems to answer the same purpose in the deep wells of northern Ohio. A belt of soapstone or shale represents the Niagara shale in this part of the state. It has escaped recognition, or at least, record, in many of the wells, but others show it to be a distinct element in the section. The underlying Clinton seems to contain shale mingled with the limestone, agreeing in this respect with the phases of the formation in New York.

It also has a greater thickness than is found in the solid limestone stratum of this age in southern Ohio.

In other words, the so-called "upper limestone" of the Findlay wells is found, when carefully studied, to comprise the following elements, viz.: Niagara limestone, Cedarville division, Springfield division, 100 to 250 feet; 160 feet in first well.

Niagara shale, 0 to 25 feet; 10 feet in first well.

Clinton limestone and shale, 50 to 100 feet; 80 feet in Findlay wells.

Underneath the upper limestone, 850 feet of shales are found, which the driller separates on the basis of color, classifying them as red, gray and dark or black shales. In making this classification, however, he is but following the divisions made long ago by the geologist. The red shale that he reports as thirty or more feet thick, and which, in fact, is usually more than twice this thickness, can be nothing else but the Medina shale, the western representative of the Medina sandstone of New York.

The blue or gray shale, often distinctly greenish in some of its layers, and generally carrying numerous fossils, especially in the thin leaves of limestone which are interstratified with the shale, is in the place and has all the characteristics of the Hudson River shales of New York. A thickness of 424 feet is assigned to it in the record of well No. 1, but the lower boundary is not sharp and distinct, and the facts now in hand prove that it would be better to increase this section by 100 or more feet at the expense of the division next below. The Hudson River shales can be counted, therefore, as about 550 feet in thickness in northern Ohio.

There remains to be assigned to its place in the geological column the lowest portion of the shale found by the driller. It is somewhat calcareous in composition, though not highly so. It is dark in color, sometimes brownish, sometimes blueish-black. It is 250 to 300 feet in thickness. Though fossils are rare in it, they are not entirely wanting. Careful search in the drillings revealed the frequent presence cf a minute, almost microscopic form, Leptobolus insignis, Hall, especially in the lowest beds. This is the most characteristic fossil of the Utica shale, and to this reference all the facts given above as to composition, color and thickness, agree. There is, therefore, no difficulty nor ambiguity in resolving the great shale formation of the Findlay wells into the well-known and widely extended geological elements already named, viz., the Medina, Hudson River and Utica shales.

Equally free from obscurity or question is the reference of the one remaining element of the section, viz., the "lower limestone" or the gas and oil rock. This can not be anything but the Trenton limestone

of the general column. It agrees in all essentials with this great stratum. Fragments of characteristic fossils frequently occur. In the lower portions of the first well, the drillings showed the crystalline points of calcite that give the so-called Birdseye structure to the bottom beds of the Trenton limestone elsewhere. We are therefore safe in referring this 550 feet stratum of the Findlay well to the Trenton, including both the Galena or uppermost, the Trenton proper and the Birdseye divisions.

It is thus seen that the geological growth of northern Ohio is identical in its phases with the growth of New York and Canada. The column shown in the wells is strictly comparable in all of its main features with the column of western New York, agreeing much more closely with this than with the section that is shown in outcrop in southern Ohio and in the territory adjacent to it.

The reference here given was made known to the drillers at once, and the several elements of the scale last mentioned, viz., the Medina, Hudson River, Utica and Trenton epochs, none of which are found in outcrop in the state, in separate, unequivocal and undisputed form were at once adopted and made to enjoy universal currency. The Trenton limestone, in particular, has already become a household word in northwestern Ohio and in all the states adjacent.

A few chemical analyses of the several strata found in the first Findlay well are appended here. They were executed for the survey by Prof. N. W. Lord:

The gas rock, as shown in No. 3, appears in a more impure form than at most other points in the field. This fact arises from the Utica shale being mixed in the drillings. The composition of the gas rock by itself is shown in No. 4.