STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF FOSSIL FUELS. 27 



Island and Pennsylvania. McCreath*° states that P. Frazer had 

 found coal in Triassic beds of York County, Pennsylvania, but 

 neither he nor Frazer in his York County report gives a descrip- 

 tion of the deposit. According to McCreath, the coal is deep black, 

 vi^ith pitchy luster, brittle and with conchoidal fracture. The proxi- 

 mate composition is : Water at 225° F., 4.310; volatile, 18.482 ; fixed 

 carbon, 74.358; sulphur, 0.528; ash, 2.322. There is no tendency 

 to cake and the gases burn with non-luminous flames. The dried 

 coal absorbs water with great avidity, so that within a few hours it 

 re-absorbs about 63 per cent, of the water originally present. 



The important region known as the Richmond coal field is 

 reached at a little way north from the James River in Virginia. 

 Mining operations were begun a century ago and for many years 

 they were on extensive scale. Irregularities in the seams and the 

 many faults made mining costly and the local coal was displaced 

 by anthracite from Pennsylvania. Operations now are unim- 

 portant. 



Fontaine,*^ in the introduction to his descriptions of fossil plants 

 obtained in the Richmond and adjacent areas, gave a synopsis of the 

 relations. The Triassic rocks occupy several areas in a belt extending 

 from Rhode Island to South Carolina. The most westerly area, 

 termed the Palisade, is almost continuous from the Hudson River 

 across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland to about 75 miles 

 southwest from the Potomac River in Virginia ; it is without coal. 

 The small area of Buckingham County, Virginia, is east from the last 

 and like it is without coal. The Dan River area, still farther east, 

 is in Virginia and North Carolina ; it has some coal in the latter 

 state. The Cumberland (Farmville) area is small but has some 

 coal seams of local importance. The Richmond, 30 miles east from 

 the Cumberland, is the last in Virginia, but the Deep River, still 

 farther east, is in North Carolina and extends to the South Carolina 

 border. 



Red beds prevail in the western areas but they are insignificant 

 in the Cumberland and Richmond areas. Fontaine recognized three 



40 A. S. McCreath, Second Geol. Survey Penn., Report MM, 1879, P- I03- 

 *i W. M. Fontaine, " The Older Mesozoic Flora of Virginia," U. S. Geol. 

 Survey, Mon. VI., 1883, pp. 1-7, 12-16, 32, 45, 79. 



