4 OEIGIXAL COXNECTIOX OF THE EASTERN AND 



tion shows us that if we l)ut protract the plane given us l)y the upper 

 surface of the two fiekls across the intervening space, we wouhl rephice 

 the l:)eds in the gap that separates them. Tliis suggestion of original con- 

 tinuity that is made to the eye on simple inspection, is abundantly borne 

 out by other evidence, which I will now proceed to consider, taking up 

 the several series of fiicts in the following order: 



1st. The physical evidences of a continuous sea or swamp over the 

 whole of Kentucky at the several stages of the carboniferous period. 



2d. The vital evidences of a similar unity of the physical conditions at 

 the before mentioned time. 



3d. The evidences of the amount of wear to which this district has been 

 subjected since its last continued depression below the level of the sea. 



The evidences of a i^hysieal nature going to prove the former existence 

 of any particular series of deposits in any area where they are no longer 

 found, may differ very much in different conditions, but are in the main 

 limited to two classes of fiicts. In the lii'st place, we may have the debris 

 of ancient deposits lying in variously distributed ruins in the region where 

 the beds they represent have long since been destroyed; in the second 

 place, we may have a given district showing by its topography, inherited 

 from a more ancient time, that it has had its drainage system formed in 

 beds other than those which now cover its surface. 



Searching over the district that lies between the ragged borders of the 

 eastern and western coal-fields, I have found at many points the most 

 unquestionable indications of ruined carboniferous beds. In the very cen- 

 tre of the Muldraugh-hill escai'}:)ment of the Subcarboniferous series, the 

 beds of lower St. Louis limestone are covered by the waste of a conglom- 

 erate that is no longer in place. This waste consists not only of a great 

 quantity of detached pebbles of quartz, but also of considerable slabs of a 

 coarse ferruginous sandstone with like quartz pebbles, the slabs with their 

 angles unrounded, and evidently not transported by water. This waste, 

 occurring upon the high summits and not upon the lowlands, puts it 

 beyond a doubt that it is the waste of a conglomei'ate that once capped 

 these hills. The character of this conglomerate is quite unmistakable; 

 no one familiar with the geology of this district can doubt that it is from 

 the Subcarboniferous conglomerates, the millstone grits of many geolo- 

 gists. The lower lying rocks of our Kentucky series are so Avell known 

 as to make it quite impossible to suppose that there is any other con- 



