110 FeatherstonhaugWs Geological Report. 



about 400 feet high, containing a six-feet vein, which has been 

 long worked for the use of the city. It would be superfluous 

 in me to allude to other localities, or to those which are so 

 exceedingly interesting up the valley of the Monongahela, 

 it having been recently done with much detail and accuracy.* 

 The great extent also of this Western coal region is sufficiently 

 known to convey an adequate idea of its vast resources. f 

 Mr. R.C. Taylor estimates the area covered by certain coun 

 ties in Pennsylvania which lie within it, to cover twenty-one 

 thousand square miles, exclusive of other counties which lie 

 partially out of it. If to this are added the extensive deposites 

 in Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, 

 and Missouri, we see sufficient reasons for indulging the most 

 sanguine anticipations of the future wealth to be accumulated 

 in this part of the country. But it is not the coal alone its 

 concomitants, iron and salt, will aid in accelerating its pros 

 perity. Although the general geological arrangement of the 

 coal measures in the United States and in England is very 

 similar, as to the mineral structure of the beds, the or 

 ganic incidents, and the associate deposites of iron, yet the 

 analogy does not hold as respects the salt. I shall make a few 

 remarks on this subject by-and-by, which will be compara 

 tively useful to observers here. The beds of the coal meas 

 ures in the northern counties of England, are irregular alter 

 nations of sandstones, composed of fragments of silex, mica, 

 and felspar with a mineral cement, schistose clayey beds, and 

 veins of bituminous coal. The schistose beds contain iron 

 stone, in nodules and layers, which appear to be formed by 

 molecular attraction in the ancient muds, now become shale. 



* Dr. S. P. Hildreth &quot; on the bituminous coal deposites of the valley of the 

 Ohio,&quot; &c. See Silliman s Journal, October, 1835. 



t Besides the numerous quantity of veins lying high and dry above the streams, 

 there are the yet unexplored ones lying beneath them. In boring for salt water 

 in many parts of this region, many coal veins have been passed through, some of 

 them six and eight feet thick. Those in the JNewcastle district, England, known 

 as the high and low main seams, which are worked at great depths, are known to 

 extend over 150 miles square, and have been mined for several years. 



