Part I. Report of progress in 1869, by J. S. Newberry, chief geologist. Part II. Report of progress in the second district, by E. B. Andrews, assist. geologist. Part III. Report on geology of Montgomery County, by Edward Orton, assist. geologist.

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Next below is the "city ledge," so called, a stratum of close-grained
greyish-drab sandstone, from three feet to four feet thick, from which the
fine building stone now generally used in Cincinnati and other cities of
the valley is obtained. Usually no other is quarried, but lately a ledge,
two feet thick, lying immediately under it, and of the same color and
general composition, has been introduced to the market and been received with favor.
The price of these stones at Cincinnati is fifty cents per cubic foot, less
than one-third that of the brown stone so much used in New York and
other eastern cities, but which is, nevertheless, no stronger, nor more
durable, nor any easier worked, nor, in common estimation, more beautiful than what is here so cheaply and abundantly afforded. Accordingly,
in all buildings constructed in Cincinnati, during the last fifteen years,
where anything like elegance is attempted, whether public or private,
for residence or business, the " Buena Vista Free Stone," so called, is the
material used. And owing to its cheapness it is put up in more massive
blocks, and forming thicker walls than is common in the East.
Close below the city ledge comes a bed of black bituminous slate or
shale fifteen feet thick.
This in turn rests upon a series of layers, in all about 125 feet thick,
of fine cream colored sandstone, separated by thin deposits of clayey
shale. One or two of these layers near the bottom of the series are of
beautiful appearance, quarry and work well, and seem well adapted to
the finest building purposes, but as they are locked down by so heavy a
mass of what has at present no merchantable value, they are not worked.
Ultimately, however, the whole must come into use to build up the great
and beautiful cities that are, and are to be, in the valleys of the Ohio
and Mississippi.
Next we come to a second bed of black bituminous slate of the thickness of from three hundred to three hundred and fifty feet, and known
in geology as the Hamilton Shale. Like the upper bed, this slate is
highly bituminous. Numerous issues of petroleum from its surface and
above it caused oil seekers to bore several wells in the neighborhood in question, during the years 1865 and 1866, but without valuable result. It is also
rich in sulphur, and is said to contain, besides considerable lime, phosphorus and potash.
In other countries much thinner and poorer beds of bituminous matter
than these, have, for many years, been worked and distilled for the production of oil. And though at present all the distilleries that have been
put up for that purpose in the vicinity of Freestone, are lying idle, or
being dismantled, yet if ever the time shall come when a short supply or
extended consumption of petroleum shall raise its price to double or
treble what it now is, resort must be had to some such basis of supply
as we find at the foot of the hills of Adams and Scioto counties, in that
immense bituminous deposit.
Many fruit growers and especially grape growers of the eastern shores
of Lake Erie, and others on the borders of Crooked lake, New York,
attribute their remarkable success to the presence in the soil of their
orchards and vineyards of this same slate. To it they have lately been
led to trace not merely the large and regular crops they have obtained —
so abundant and so certain as to have run up the price of land to speculative rates-but also their very great immunity from the vine disease.
They find in the slate an abundance of sulphur, which is the well known
remedy for that disease. It is stated that vine growers in the north of