1865.] 37 [Lesley. 



an elevation of 195* feet above the creek, 4 feet thick (with- 

 out parting slates), and dipping locally 2° towards S. 80° E. 



About the other beds we know absolutely nothing at all, 

 except that one or more of thenj becomes of great size (6 to 

 10 feet thick) in the neighborhood of Prestonburg. 



The Suh-conglomerate Coal, which is a respectable 4-foot 

 bed in Middle Kentucky,! crops out all along the foot of the 

 Conglomerate cliifs, in the caiions of Upper Paint Lick 

 waters, just above water-level, and of variable thickness, 

 being sometimes only a few inches thick, sometimes yielding 

 two feet of coal, and sometimes showing an outcrop of mere 

 black slate, three or four feet thick. 



This is, perhaps, the 6-inch bed of coal which the three 

 wells at Lyon's Steam Mill, at the mouth of Open Fork, are 

 said to have passed through, not many feet beneath the water- 

 level ; but I think it more probable that it is a second and 

 lower bed belonging to the Sub-conglomerate System, but of 

 still less practical importance. 



A bed of iron ore (blue carbonate of iron) everywhere 

 accompanies the coal and black slate just under the Con- 

 glomerate Rock. But this, also — although well developed in 

 Middle Kentucky, — seems to be of small importance on Paint 

 Creek. ITear the Lyon Well I saw it as a stratum of balls, 

 2 to 4 inches thick, enveloped in shales,* and lying about 5 

 feet below the bottom plate of the Conglomerate.! The 

 shales are themselves ferruginous, and bog iron-ore springs 

 issue from the edge of the stratum, in many places, forming 

 puddles of yellow slime, which the people call sulphur, but 

 which is merely iron-rust, commonly mixed, also, with oil. 



* Kentucky Eeports, Yol. I, p. 210. 



f See Joseph Lesley's Report in Kent. Eep. Vol. IV, p. 474. The 

 bed near Proctor, Owsley County, is 42 to 50 inches thick, and is one of 

 a system of Sub-carhoniferous Coal Measures, consisting of five (5) beds. 



J Some charlatan had given the neighbors to believe that it was an 

 ore of platinum. Just as Owen describes "the Swift mine" of silver, 

 near the Tennessee line, as turning out, on examination by him, to 

 be merely dark gray kidney clay ironstone. Vol. I, p. 222. In Estill 

 County, the ore varies from 7 to 24 inches, but rests directly on the sub- 

 carboniferous limestone. Vol. IV, p. 471. 



