CASS AND MENARD COUNTIES, 167 



as to afford an opportunity for accurate measurement, can hardly be less than 

 fifty or sixty feet. 



East of the mouth of this ravine, through the northern half of section 11, 

 this sandstone appears in ledges in the bluffs, at an elevation of fifty feet or 

 more above the road, and has been quarried in one or two small ravines. In 

 one of these ravines, in the northeast quarter of section eleven, I observed the 

 only outcrop I Was enabled to find of the coal seam, the exposed thickness of 

 which was about three feet. This is on the northeastern slope of the anti- 

 clinal, and only a little further on the Loess and Alluvium come down to the 

 road, and the exposures of rock cease to appear for the distance of several 

 miles. Leaving the last mentioned localities, and continuing eastward along 

 the base of the bluffs, the next prominent exposure is met with near the center 

 of the western part of section 10, township 18, range 10, on the left bank of 

 Job creek, just above the point where it comes out of the bluffs and enters the 

 bottoms. Here, the sandstone No. 2 has been quarried in the hill-side, some 

 thirty feet or more above the water, and presents precisely the same appear- 

 ance as at the other localities already mentioned. The lower beds of limestone 

 and shale, and the coal seams, if, indeed, they occur above the bottom of the 

 ravine at all, are completely hidden by the fragments and debris from above. 

 The sandstone appears again at one or two points farther east, within the dis- 

 tance of one mile, in the northeast quarter of section 10, and almost on the line 

 between sections 10 and 11. 



The only remaining locality in Cass county, where the older rocks appear at 

 the surface, or are artificially exposed, is on Panther creek, near Chandlerville, 

 in sections 5 and 6, township 18^ range 9. A shallow coal shaft in the south- 

 east quarter of section 6 affordedithe following section, according to Mr. Wil- 

 liam Shores, the proprietor : 



^ FEET. IN. 



1. Surface soil *3fa 4 



2. Gravel (" Blue bind ") ^*k; 4 



3. Black slate 7^ , 2 



4. Clay shale (" Soapstone ") 13 



5. Coal 2 6 



6. Fire-clay, passing downwards into nodular limestone 2 



7. Clay, penetrated 2 



The shale and slate appear in the bank of the creek, for upwards of half a 

 mile above the eoal diggings, seldom rising more than two or three feet above 

 the water's edge. No fossils were discovered. It seems quite probable that 

 this seam of coal is the same as that in the exposures further west, although 

 from the lack of continuity in the exposures, and of other sufiicient evidence, 

 it may, perhaps, be best to refer it only provisionally. 



