152 GEOLOGY OF ILLINOIS. 



McPherson's coal bank is situated in the northwest quarter of section 33, 

 township 16, range 12. The distance from the surface of the ground to the 

 bottom of the coal : n the shaft, is about twenty-six feet. After passing through 

 fifteen feet of soil and drift clay, a'jout eight feet of dark colored shale and 

 black slate, containing many heavy ironstone concretions are met with, and 

 still under this, the coal at this point only twenty inches in thickness. The 

 fragments of black slate, which had been thrown ont of the shaft, contained a 

 few fossils, among which I recognized only Discina nitida, the others being 

 mostly unrecognizable. 



A bed of coal, which may possibly be the same as that in the localities already 

 mentioned, is reported to occur in about the center of the western part of section 

 20, township 16, range 12, on the land of Mr. Harris. The coal is said to occur 

 at a depth of about twelve feet below the bed of Coon run, where it has been 

 struck by excavations, although it was found impossible to work it on account 

 of the water. The bed of the creek, a short distance above this point, is com- 

 posed of rather irregularly bedded, light-gray limestone ; the beds, as far as I 

 was able to observe them at the time of my visit, lying horizontal, or very nearly 

 so. Below, along the banks and bed of the stream, in the eastern part of sec- 

 tion 19, there appears alight colored, shaly limestone in the bed of the stream, 

 and about two hundred yards still farther down stream, but higher in actual 

 position, heavy beds of a soft, massive, ferruginous sandstone appear in the sides 

 of the ravine. I am, however, inclined at present to think that these beds may 

 possibly belong to the upper part of the St. Louis Group, and not to the Coal 

 Measures, though the lack of fossils and the want of continuity in the expo- 

 sures, make this a rather difficult question to decide with certainty. 



The coal No. 2, of the Illinois river section, is worked in this county, at one 

 of its typical localities, and probably at several other points also. At Neely- 

 ville, on the Toledo, Wabash and Western railroad, near the western border of 

 the county, this seam of coal immediately underlies the Drift, at a depth below 

 the surface, at the principal diggings, of from ten to fifteen feet. A shaft sunk 

 upon the top of the hill, however, a short distance south of the railroad, passed 

 through eighty-five feet of the brown and blue clays of the Drift, before reach- 

 ing the coal. The seam varies from four feet two inches to four and one-half 

 feet in thickness, of which, however, only about three and one-half feet is avail- 

 able from eight inches to one foot of the coal being required to be left to 

 support the roof. 



In the eastern part of the village, a shaly sandstone, varying in color from 

 light reddish to gray, is exposed in the bottom and sides of the ditches along 

 the railroad, for a distance of three hundred yards or more. The whole thick- 

 ness exposed is not over eight feet, and the beds appear to be very nearly hori- 

 zontal. From the locality and appearance of this sandstone or sandy shale, I 



