;.. . * 



114 Feather stonhaugtfs Geological Report. 



vicinity of Frostburg are said to give a thickness of fifty- four 

 feet.* A section of the strata at the Junior Furnace,! Scioto, 

 Ohio, shows a mean thickness of about six feet in three beds 

 alternating with coal. The deposites of this kind which I have 

 examined in the United States appear to have been made 

 almost all from fresh-water chalybeates, loaded with ferrugi- 

 nous matter, which accords with similar beds in Europe. At 

 Abersychan, in South Wales, England, the beds, in a breadth 

 of 119 yards, give an aggregate thickness of 42 feet 8 inches 

 of coal, yielding upwards of 30,000 tons to the acre, whilst the 

 numerous deposites of hydrate of iron alternating with the coal 

 veins, give at the rate of 15,000 tons per acre. Mr. R. C. 

 Taylor states^ that, by the official returns of the Monmouth- 

 shire Canal Company, there were brought down to the wharves 

 of Newport from that district alone, in one year, 513,974 tons 

 of coal, and 104,129 tons of iron. 



Thus far the analogy between the structure of this portion 

 of the geological column in hoth hemispheres seems to be per- 

 fect ; it fails, however, as it respects the salt, which in England 

 is drawn from the new red sandstone group, higher up in the 

 series than the coal measures, whilst in this country, in Penn- 

 sylvania, in Ohio, and on the Kenawha in Virginia, the coal 

 strata have to be penetrated to arrive at the salt. In my report 

 of last year I gave a section of this kind 700 feet deep, at 

 Kiskiminetas, in Pennsylvania. Dr. Hildreth states i that, 

 twenty-five miles from the mouth of the Muskirigum, wells 

 have been sunk 900 feet deep for salt, which is 300 feet 

 below the level of tide- water. It is a very general opinion that 

 these wells are supplied from the percolation of fresh water 

 through certain saliferous strata, charged with particles of 



* Report of an examination of the coal measures, including the iron ore 

 deposites, Sec. George W. Hughes, U. S. civil engineer. Page 20. 



fDr. Hildreth's observations, &c. Silliman, Oct. 1835. Page 133. 

 + Transactions Geological Society of London, vol. 3, page 436, 

 $ Page 36, 



