246 GEOLOGY OF ILLINOIS. 



from two to six inches thick, and is easily quarried in large slabs suita- 

 ble for flagging. It is extensively quarried and used throughout the 

 neighborhood for foundation walls, for walling wells, and for various 

 other purposes for which a building stone is required. The middle por- 

 tion of the bed has an earthy texture, and resembles a hydraulic lime- 

 stone. The quarry can be cheaply worked, from the small amount of 

 stripping required to clear the rock from the overlaying drift clays. 



A few feet of blue clay shales were seen below the limestone, but no 

 outcrop was found where a good section from coal No. 7 up to the lime- 

 stone could be made. The nearest outcrop of the coal was about a mile 

 and a half distant, and at a somewhat lower level, and I estimated the 

 distance between them at about fifty feet. This would bring the lime- 

 stone here about on the same stratigraphical level with that at Lons- 

 dale's quarries on the south side of the Kickapoo ; and although the 

 limestone at Chase's quarries differs somewhat in its lithological char- 

 acters from that at Lonsdale's, I am still disposed to regard them as 

 probably equivalent beds. The distance between the limestone and the 

 coal at Lousdale's was forty-eight to fifty feet by measurement, while 

 at Chase's quarries, according to the best estimate I could make, it 

 seemed to be about the same. Furthermore, if this limestone represents 

 a higher bed, then the Lonsdale limestone should be found outcropping 

 between it and the coal, and from the thinness of the drift clays in this 

 vicinity its outcrop could hardly be concealed. The color of the rock 

 is very similar at the two localities, and there is also a general similarity 

 between them, in this : that the purest limestone and the thickest layers 

 are at the bottom, of the bed, and the thinner impure layers above. 

 But the lower part of the bed at Lonsdale's is a fine-grained, compact 

 rock, while here the same portion of the bed is a rather coarsely granu- 

 lar crinoidal limestone, and the upper part of the bed at the one locality 

 is in nodular, uneven layers, and weathers on exposure to a heap of 

 limestone pebbles, while at the other it is more evenly-bedded, and can 

 be quarried in slabs of considerable size. If these two exposures are 

 not equivalent beds, then the Lonsdale limestone is not developed here 

 at all, and the limestone north of Princeville is deposited unconforma- 

 bly upon the shales above coal No. 7. This limestone is the uppermost 

 bed of rocks exposed in this part of the county, and its outcrop is on 

 an elevated prairie, apparently one of the highest in this vicinity. 



In tracing the various outcrops of the strata in this county the dip is 

 found to be very slightly to the north-eastward, and about three feet to 

 the mile. Hence No. 6 coal, which, on the lower course of the Kickapoo 

 ranges from seventy-five to eighty feet above the level of that stream, 

 is found just below the level of the small creeks north of the Snatch- 

 wine, while No. 4 is from sixty-five to seventy feet below their beds, and 



