BROWN COUNTY. 71 



where the seam has thus been laid bare. This seam is as thick here as it is in 

 the vicinity of Colchester, where it is successfully worked, both by tunneling 

 into the hillsides along its outcrop, and by shafts sunk to the level of the coal 

 on the highlands. It will furnish about two million tons of coal to the 

 square mile, and probably underlies at least two-thirds of the area of the 

 county. 



Coal seam No. 1 is quite irregular in its development, and at most points 

 where we found the horizon of this coal exposed, we found the coal replaced by 

 a thin bed of bituminous shale. Just above LaGrange, we were told that a 

 seam had been formerly opened at the foot of the bluff, where the coal was 

 about two feet thick, and if so, it must have been the lower seam. We also 

 found an outcrop, at about the same horizon, on Little Missouri creek, near the 

 north line of the county, on section 5, township 3 south, range 4 west, where 

 the coal was about two feet thick, which, probably, is an outcrop of No. 1. It 

 generally affords an inferior coal to that produced from the seam above it, and 

 for that reason it will not be as extensively worked as the other seam, even when 

 found of the same thickness. 



The thin seam which outcrops a little northeast of Mount Sterling, may be 

 the representative of No. 3, and if not, is a local development of coal, coming 

 in between No. 3 and 4. It is the only seam met with in the county above 

 No. 2, and its distance above that may be due entirely to a local thickening of 

 the intervening strata. But, in the absence of the characteristic fossils that 

 are usually found in connection with No. 3 coal, it is difficult to decide posi- 

 tively whether this seam should be considered as the equivalent of that, or as 

 holding a higher position. However, as it is probably nowhere developed of 

 sufficient thickness to be successfully worked, the question has no important 

 practical bearing in estimating the coal resources of the county. No. coal will 

 be found here below the beds of the main water courses, as we have already 

 stated that these have been cut down quite through the Coal Measures, and into 

 the upper divisions of the Lower Carboniferous limestone series, which underlie 

 all the coal strata at present known in this country. 



Potter's Clay. This county has long been noted for the amount of potter's 

 ware, annually manufactured within its limits. The potteries are mostly loca- 

 ted in the vicinity of Ripley, though the bed of clay shale, which furnishes 

 the material from which the ware is manufactured, is found outcropping at 

 several other localities. It is exposed at LaGranee, and attains about the 

 same thickness there as at Ripley, and lies between the two lower coal seams. 

 The bed is about fifteen feet in thickness, but only the upper portion of it is 

 used for pottery. Where it was first opened, the overlying beds had been car- 

 ried away by Drift agencies, and the surface of the clay shale had been long 

 exposed to the action of atmospheric influences, which reduced it to the condi- 



