WHITE.] THE LYKENS OR POTTSVILLE COALS. 7(57 



the most valuable of the entire series of Carboniferous coals; for, 

 while as individual beds the Pottsville coals may be inferior in thick- 

 ness and areal extent, their superior qualities create for them the high- 

 est demand and encourage their production even under conditions 

 entirely unfavorable for the exploitation of other and thicker beds. 

 To this formation belong- the Sharon coal of northern Ohio and north- 

 western Pennsylvania; the Pocahontas and New River coals of Virginia 

 and West Virginia, celebrated as steam and coking- coals; the chief 

 coal horizons of eastern Tennessee; the coals of Georgia; and the prin- 

 cipal furnace and steam coals of Alabama, The special fitness for 

 domestic use of the rather fi-ee-burning Lj^kens coals, which wins for 

 them an advance of from 25 cents to $1.25 per ton over the prices of 

 other coals of the anthracite series, has resulted in the establishment 

 in the Lincoln-Lykens region of several of the largest raining plants 

 in the anthracite helds, the capacitj^ of the Lincoln and Brookside 

 collieries,^ which are exclusively occupied with the Lykens coals, being 

 2,900 tons a day of ten hours. 



For a long time it was supposed that the Lykens coals were of the 

 age of the Productive Coal Measures, the supra Pottsville series, but 

 later and more svstematic stratigraphic work has shown them to be 

 distributed through the Pottsville formation itself. It requires but a 

 glance at the plant fossils of these coals to detect their antiquity as 

 compared with those of the coals of the higher formation. 



Like the other members of the formation, the coals are exceedingly 

 variable in thickness, often attaining a remarkable local development, 

 though east of the Lincoln region they seldom reach a workable thick- 

 ness except in isolated and restricted areas. Nevertheless, one of the 

 lower coals appears to extend over a considerable territory in Broad 

 Mountain, where it has been worked at a number of points, and 

 whence it ma}' be traced over the narrow arch into the Shamokin 

 region of the Western Middle Anthracite field. The coals have been 

 tested at many points to the eastward. One of the beds is still worked 

 in a mine operated by Mr. Isaac Christ on the east side of Locust Gap, 

 at Tamaqua, while the fossils obtained from a drift lately opened near 

 the head of the incline on Mount Pisgah, at Mauch Chunk, show the coal 

 to lie relatively high in the Pottsville. In the Dauphin Basin, west- 

 ward from Rausch Gap and the Lincoln region, the Lykens coals are 

 not worked at present. The basin, the central portion of which was 

 extensivel}^ prospected in the early half of the century, has long been 

 abandoned, for the reason that in passing westward the coals opened 

 were found to be soft, crushed, semibituminous, and of generally 

 inferior qualit}". 



1 Analyses of the West Brookside coals made by Dr. Cresson in 1879 show : Volatile matter, 5.4 per 

 cent ; ash, 8.78 per cent ; .sulphur, 0.36 per cent ; phosphorus, none ; fixed (carbon, 85.636 per cent. 



