j 
TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 75 
tion in the quantity of bituminous matter from W. to E. In the Illinois it amounts 
to 40 or 45 per cent.; in Western Ohio, from 35 to 40; in Eastern Ohio, 25 to 30; 
in the table-land of the Alleghanies it is reduced to 18 or 20 per cent.; in a little 
coal-field 20 miles E. of the great field it is only 14 or 15 per cent.; in the western 
edge of the anthracite field 10 or 12 per cent.; and in the great body of the anthra- 
- cite only 1 or 2 per cent. of gaseous matter exists, and this not in the form of bitumen. 
Further south, in Kentucky and Tennessee, the same change takes place, and the 
associated rocks become metamorphic eastwards; all the coal, of every kind, rests 
on the same basis of rock, with the same fossils distributed through it, and the par- 
_ ticular coal-beds can be identified even when separated by an interval of fifty miles; 
The anthracite field is 5000 feet deep, and contains fifty seams of coal; the bitumi- 
nous coal-field of Ohio is 2800 feet deep. The working of these coal-fields is in- 
creasing rapidly ; 3,000,000 tons of anthracite and 1,000,000 tons of bituminous coal 
are annually raised; and 700,000 tons of iron manufactured. A process for melt- 
ing iron-ore with anthracite was long wanted, and the government of Pennsylvania had 
offered a premium for such a discovery; this was first achieved by Mr. Crane, in 
South Wales, by whom a patent was obtained in England; and for the use of it in 
America one iron-master guaranteed him a premium on all the ore melted; but for 
want of an international patent-right, the process was soon imitated, and in some 
cases improved upon, by other parties in America. 
Drawings were exhibited of the anthracite coal-mines on the Lehigh-river, Penn- 
sylvania, which are worked like an open quarry on the slope of a mountain rising 
900 feet above the river; the coal is sixty feet thick, and surrounds the quarry in 
black glistening walls, capped by forty feet of yellow sandstone; it is conveyed by a 
_ self-acting railway for eight miles down a declivity of from 100 to 140 feet per mile ; 
_ the whole cost of obtaining it being 2d.aton. This great bed of coal splits up into 
a number of divisions when quarried at some distance. 
6. Professor Rogers then alluded to the subject of the drift, which had received 
_ new interest in America from the visit of M. Agassiz. This deposit is spread over 
_ the whole of the States and extends westward to the Upper Missouri; when it rests 
_ upon the older strata its floor is worn and striated with furrows, which follow the 
pre-established contour of the surface, diverging when they meet any obstacle, and 
coalescing on the further side; their general direction is N. and S. This drift is 
strewed indiscriminately over all the high ground as well as the valleys; neither the 
White Mountains in New York, 6000 feet high, nor those between Lake Champlain 
and the St. Lawrence, 5000 or 6000 feet high,.being centres from which the drift 
_was dispersed. Besides this general drift, with its boulders, there are long trains of 
_ angular masses of rock running N. by W. and S. by E. on the borders of New York 
and Massachussetts, derived from great ragged chasms in the summits of the 
Alleghanies 1000 feet above the plain. These angular blocks rest upon the surface 
_of the drift, which overspreads the country to the depth of twenty or thirty feet ; 
they vary in size from that of a hogshead to a small house, one of them being fifty 
feet long, and they do not much diminish in size from N. to S. One of these 
‘trains has been traced to a distance of fifty miles, another parallel line at a distance 
of half a mile is twenty miles long, and there are various others; they are about 
200 yards wide, and the blocks are not in contact, but lie a little apart. They are 
“Rot strewed like moraines along the flanks of hills, but pass alike over mountain and 
valley, climbing summits higher than that from which they originated. 
Observations on the Great Anticlinal Line of the Mineral Basin of South 
i. Wales. By WititAm Price Struve, CE. 
_ The object of the few observations which I have to offer on this subject, is to 
describe the great central uprise of the coal-measures in Glamorganshire, between 
the Vale of ‘laff and the estuary of the Burry, in Carmarthen Bay. 
__ Indoing so, I will at the same time mention some of the governing features of the 
South Wales coal-field, confining myself principaliy to that portion of it situated be- 
tween the Taff Valley and Carmarthen Bay. 
This district comprises Glamorganshire and portions of the counties of Carmarthen 
_ and Brecon, and occupies an area of about 560 square miles. It is intersected by six 
‘ 
