Hayden.] S06 [January. 



a tape-line, fourteen inches of lignite, best quality, four and a half 

 feet of indurated carbonaceous clay with numerous irregular local 

 seams of pure coal, like cannel coal. These small seams vary from 

 two inches to two feet in length, and from one-eighth to two inches 

 in thickness. This carbonaceous clay gradually passes up into a 

 light ash-colored indurated clay with some calcareous matter, with 

 oxide of iron, which colors the seams of the fractures on exposure. 

 Thickness, five and a half feet. The layer of pure lignite is under- 

 laid by impure, but I could not tell to what extent, though its char- 

 acter is like that which lies above the pure bed. This pure bed of 

 lignite is underneath the yellow bed before mentioned, and the yel- 

 low bed when indurated into compact rock contains impressions of the 

 leaves of a species of Populus identical with one so abundant on 

 Tongue River in the lignite clay. There are also a few Unios in a 

 friable condition. The lignite burns with a quiet, steady, red flame, 

 gives out a good degree of heat, leaves comparatively little ash, 

 ignites very readily with no breaking in pieces, no snapping, no bitu- 

 men. Fragments of turtle shells, and small pieces of a gum-like resin, 

 like the common resin of commerce, were found at this locality. The 

 whole bluff is thirty-five feet high, but taken with the dip of the 

 beds there are probably forty or fifty feet of strata exposed, and only 

 one seam of lignite which is pure enough for fuel." 



The lignite of the cretaceous beds, so far as Dr. Hayden has ob- 

 served it, is entirely worthless for economical purposes. It may be 

 more pure where it is not exposed to the atmosphere. It was first 

 noticed along the Missouri River, near the Omaha Indian reservation, 

 in the sandstones of the Dakota group. It extends about forty miles 

 up the Big Sioux River, never attains a thickness of more than two 

 feet, and is very impure. It is barely possible that by sinking a shaft, 

 that portion which is concealed from the atmosphere may be of some 

 value for fuel. Near Smoky Hill, along the line of the Union Pacific 

 Railroad, the Dakota sandstones again reveal a thin lignite bed. 

 This, too, is very impure, and gives no promise of being useful as fuel. 

 The lignite beds at Raton Mountains are regarded as a continuation 

 southward of those at Denver and vicinity. Prof J. W. Bailey, as 

 far back as 1848, expressed the opinion that this Raton coal was 

 probably of the age of the " Brora " coal. Since, therefore, we find 

 no well-marked pure beds of lignites in the cretaceous rocks of the 

 West, and throughout the Lignite Tertiary Basin of the Upper Mis- 

 souri, extending southward nearly to Fort Laramie, and since we 



