A heavy easterly dip brings in the blue stone on the surface of the quarry upon the east side. This division is worked for building stone and road-making material, the only purposes to which it is adapted. The remaining courses, which are devoted to limestone and furnaceHux, may be roughly classed as follows-in fact, the quarry is worked in sheets about as here indicated:

8. Beds aggregating 3 feet.

7. Beds aggregating 3 feet. 6. Beds aggregating 3 feet.

5. Beds aggregating 25 feet.

4. Beds aggregating 4 feet.

3. Beds aggregating 4 feet.

2. Beds aggregating 35 feet. 1. Beds aggregating 2 feet.

The line of division between the cap-rock and bottom-rock probably passes between Nos. 2 and 3 of the above table.

Through the courtesy of Mr. Owens, the following analyses of these several divisions have been furnished. They were made by Professor Lord for the Columbus and Hocking Coal and Iron Company, as a guide in the selection of furnace flux. The numbers above given are used in the table:

Carbonate of lime.......

88.30 80.40 84.70 92.00 85 55 74.00 66.15 72.85 Carbonate of magnesia..... 2.58 13.80 8.64 .56 10.39 21.46 27.97 22.38 Alumina and oxide of iron.. 4.00 1.25 4.33 6.01 3.05 1.85 1.97 2.65

Silicious matter..........

3.20 4.60 2.92

1,35 1.57 1.92 2.20 1.65

98.08 100.05 100.66 99.92 100.56 99.23 98.29 99.53

Nos. 3 to 8, Nos. 1 and 2

This table tells its own story with great distinctness. inclusive, belong to the flux-stone of the Marion section. probably belong to the limestone, or lower division, of the quarries above named. If Mr. Owens chooses to go lower in his present workings, he will reach the same stratum that is supplying the Marion kilns. The stone is commonly worked in the sheets as they are numbered above, and, consequently, any quality of lime indicated in the table can be procured to order.

The lime now produced is, for the most part, a fiery lime, excellently adapted to paper and straw-board factories, and also to gas purification and glass making. For mason's and plasterer's use it is also reported as popular, but judging by the experience of other producers, it is likely to be displaced when brought into direct competition with milder limes. Such, at least, has been the usual experience in the state.

The lime found market last year as far east as Greenville, Pennsylvania, and as far west as Muncis, Indiana. The prevailing price for the year was nine cents per bushel, or fifty cents per barrel, when ordered in car-load lots.

The lime produced in the kilns of Marion and Owens' Station for 1887 aggregates about 250,000 bushels of seventy pounds, or 87,500 barrels of 200 pounds to the barrel.

SUMMARY.

In bringing to a close this review of the limes of Ohio, the following summary will be found serviceable.

There are, as shown in the preceding pages, four leading grades of lime now used in the large way in the state, if the term grades can with propriety be used in designating proportions of lime and magnesia that are fairly constant. They are as follows:

1. Limes derived from stone containing eighty-five to ninety-five per cent. of carbonate of lime.

2. Limes derived from stone containing seventy-five to eighty-five per cent. of carbonate of lime and about twenty per cent. of carbonate of magnesia.

3. Limes derived from stone containing sixty-five to seventy-five per cent. of carbonate of lime and twenty-five to thirty per cent. of carbonate of magnesia.

4. Limes derived from stone containing, approximately, fifty-five per cent. of carbonate of lime and forty-four per cent. of carbonate of magnesia (dolomites).

1. Under the first head are to be counted the Clinton limes of Clarke and Miami counties, the Columbus lime, the Ohlemacher lime of Sandusky, and the Owens' Station lime of Marion county.

3. Under the third head are counted the limes of New Paris, Preble county, and of Marion.

4. Under the fourth head are counted the magnesian limes of southwestern Ohio, and also of northern Ohio, which are well represented in the limes of Springfield, Cedarville, Genoa and Fremont.

Ths stone of the first division does not appear to be burned by preference, except in the case of the Clinton limes. In the other instances, it is the only stone available in the particular quarries that are worked.

The stones of the second and third divisions are, however, selected for this purpose in the presence of stone of the first division (with the exception of New Paris). It is so much preferred, in fact, that great expense is incurred in removing the stone of the first division in order to reach this particular grade.

The production of the fourth division largely exceeds that of all the other divisions united. The second and third divisions are being expanded rapidly. The first division has but two active centers, viz., the kilns of Ohlemacher & Company and of Owens & Son.

The conclusion is obvious, that with all the the grades of limestone above indicated open to their use, the markets of Ohio and adjacent territory, decidedly prefer for sources of mortar-limes, stones that contain from twenty to forty-five per cent. of carbonate of magnesia. This selection has been made, it is needless to remark, solely on practical grounds, the true chemical relations of these several sources of lime never having been before made known.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE DRIFT DEPOSITS OF OHIO.

BY EDWARD ORTON.

The title of this chapter may prove misleading. No discussion of the origin or of the order of arrangement of the several kinds of drift deposits found in the state is to be attempted here. The main object is to furnish in tabular form, and with due reference to geographical location and continuity, the facts that have been published in the foregoing pages, showing the thickness of the drift in the state, and particularly in its western half. To the figures already given a few others will be added.

The facts referred to in the preceding statement have all been obtained during the recent search for oil and gas that has been going forward in Ohio. The present chapter thus makes a sort of supplement to the chapters that treat specifically of this search. It will be proper, in the same connection, to gather up the various facts connected with the occurrence of gas or oil in drift-beds throughout the state. Many such facts have been already reported in earlier chapters of the present volume.

THE DRIFT AS A SOURCE OF GAS.

On the southern margin of the drift in Ohio, and for thirty or forty miles back from this margin, there are in many parts of the state considerable accumulations of vegetable matter in the shape of buried treetrunks, branches, leaves and fruits. These accumulations are often fairly continuous over considerable areas, constituting, in such cases, the "forest bed" of Newberry. They are sometimes included in masses of true bowlder clay, but more generally are found upon the surface of the bowlder clay, and are then covered only by the later deposits of the drift period, as sands, gravels and stratified clays. When found included in the bowlder clay, the vegetation must have been derived from pre-glacial growths, by which the surface of the country was covered before it was overrun by the ice. When resting on the bowlder clay, a different origin is often clearly to be made out. The vegetation is in many of the latter cases indigenous or native to the spot where it is found. Trees are found in the drift with their roots extending into the bowlder clay, and with leaves, and even fruits, well preserved in the clays and sands that cover them.

The depth at which these vegetable remains occur varies between wide limits. A score or two of feet are often found, a hundred feet more rarely, and in a single case, four hundred feet of cover were reported for a considerable amount of wood.

The wood is sometimes found in a fair state of preservation, but it is generally well along in decomposition. When brought into the air the largest fragments of tree trunks will, as a rule, rapidly disintegrate, the layers of annual growth separating easily. The kind of wood represented in these accumulations is, in almost all cases, red cedar. The leaves and berries of this same tree are sometimes found associated with the wood. Its dark color leads to a popular identification of it as black walnut.

This vegetable material is, in most if not in all instances, undergoing a slow decomposition, giving rise thereby to the ordinary products of decay under such circumstances, viz., carbonic acid and lightcarburetted hydrogen or marsh gas. Wells that are dug through or to these deposits often strike considerable accumulations of one or other of these gases. It sometimes happens that the former (carbonic acid gas or choke damp) is found in all the wells of a neighborhood. There is a small district near Mt. Sterling, in Madison county, in which no water well (unless a driven well) has ever been completed, on account of the large amount of this gas encountered in the descent and before a water-bearing bed was reached. Several well-diggers have lost their lives in the attempt to pass through this poisonous zone. (Geology of Ohio, Vol. III, p. 428.)

Much more frequently, however, marsh gas is struck in these vegetable deposits, sometimes escaping in large volume and with great force when first released, and sometimes giving rise to a small but persistent supply. The examples of such gas production are of common occurrence in all the area already pointed out.

No examples are known in the state of the utilization of the gas that is thus produced. In Champaign county, Illinois, gas that apparently originates under precisely similar conditions has been introduced into farm-houses for heat and, after being enriched by a gasoline bath,