"WESTERN COAL-FIELDS OF THE OHIO VALLEY. 7 



tion. I will only assert here that there is much evidence to be found to 

 support the affirmative side of this question. At various points in the great 

 area of the exposed Cincinnati-group beds, — whicli I am disposed to 

 term the Kentucky dome, from the fact that while a part of that area 

 extends beyond that Commonwealth, its centre and the larger part of its 

 area are within its borders. — we find the waste of a pebbly deposit such 

 as cannot be referred to any other than the conglomerate of the coal 

 series. At one point in the southern part of Campbell county, about 

 eighteen miles south of Newport, I found in a valley elevated one hun- 

 dred feet or more above the Licking river, and some miles from its pres- 

 ent bed, in the alluvial deposit such as borders all our smaller streams, 

 a quantity of fi-agments of bituminous and cannel coal. Although for 

 years the neighboring farmers had gathered these fragments, there was 

 no difficulty in finding a dozen pieces averaging five or six cubic inches 

 in size from the low bluff along the small stream. They were fairly 

 well i^reserved, owing their resistance to decay to the fact that they 

 were coals of a somewhat dense nature, and were bedded in a rather 

 impervious clay. "With them Avere occasional fossils of the Subcarbon- 

 iferous horizons, and some pebbles of the millstone-grit age. I was at first 

 disposed to refer these deposits to the action of the Licking river flow- 

 ing at higher levels, but a careful search' along the banks of this stream 

 up to within a few miles of the edge of the coal-field has failed to bear 

 out this idea; for fragments of coal are exceedingly rare in its alluvium, 

 and where they occur they are very much rounded, while those in this 

 high-lying alluvium in this small elevated valley are rather angular. At 

 a point in Taylor's creek, just aboA^e Newport, there was exposed some 

 fifteen years ago, in the stratified gravel-beds at about high-water mark 

 of the Ohio, a thin bed of much comminuted bituminous coal, about one 

 inch thick, and extending several yards along the freshly excavated bank. 

 These beds lie near the mouth of a small stream the head waters of 

 which are about fourteen miles north of the other above described local- 

 ity of coal debris. I have reports of various similar localities in central 

 Kentucky, showing a curious amount of coal waste over the Upper Cam- 

 brian or Siluro-cambrian area of the State. 



On account of these peculiar patches of coal period debris in central 

 Kentucky, I am now disposed to suggest that it is possible that a jiart 

 at least of the coal series Avrapped over the Kentucky dome, covering it 



