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24 HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
water and ice. Along the outcrop of the Berea grit, its softer portions
have undoubtedly been most extensively eroded, and are now deeply
covered by drift deposits, so that probably little of this portion of the
area it occupies will furnish valuable quarries of building stone; but as
the surface rises, and the rocks dip toward the south and east, it soon
passes beloAV the surface, and there is every probability that within the
townships of Berlin, Florence, and Vermillion, the Berea grit will hereafter
be quarried in many localities, precisely as it noAV is at Berea.
BEDFORD SHALE
BCIOAV the Berea sandstone is a bed of shale, forty to sixty feet in
thickness, which is sometimes blue, or banded in color, but more generally
red. This red shale is conspicuously shown in the Valley of the Vermillion,
and Is exposed at many places in this section of the state, immediately
underlying the Berea sandstone. It may, therefore, serve as an
important guide to those who arc seeking for the excellent quarry stone
furnished by that formation.
Neither the Berea sandstone, nor the red shale, have, in Eric Comity,
furnished any fossils; but at Elyria, Lorain County, a large number of
remains of mollusks and fishes have been taken from these strata.
CLEVELAND SHALE
Under the red shale in the banks of the Vermillion, occurs a black,
bituminous shale, sixty or more feet in thickness. This is a constant
member of the Waverly or loAA'er carboniferous group, and forms the base
of that series. It is unusually well exposed in the vicinity of Cleveland,
and I have therefore called it, for convenience sake, "Cleveland shale."
In its lithological character, this shale is hardly to lie distinguished from
the great black shale (the Huron shale), which is a member of (lie
Devonian system, and which here lies only a little below. Further cast,
hoAvever, they are separated by an interval of several hundred feet, and
the fossils which they contain are widely different. In the Cleveland
shale are bones, scales, and spines of fishes of small size, and of carboniferous
types. In the Huron shale, on the contrary, we find the
remains of fishes of enormous size, of most peculiar structure, and such
as clearly belong to the old red sandstone fauna, so fully described by
Hugh Miller.
ERIE SHALE
The lake from the Pennsylvania line to Erie County is, for the most
part, formed by a series of green and blue shales, which represent the
Chemung and Portage rocks of New York, and belong to the Devonian
formation. These shales thin out rapidly westward, and seem to he
recognizable beyond the point under consideration. In the Valley of the
Cuyahoga they are exposed to the depth of 140 feet, and have there
yielded the most characteristic fossils of the Chemung.'