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ties, and the rule was obeyed with commendable fidelity. 

 Bat when Hunt left the employ of the government of Can- 

 ada, he devoted not a little time to expert work. He made a 

 report on the Ore Knob copper mines and other 'mining 

 properties, but the enterprise to which he devoted himself 

 with all the energy and enthusiasm of his restless nature was 

 the development of the coal and iron resources of southern 

 Ohio, and particularly of the Hocking Valley. He published 

 in 1874 a volume of seventy-eight pages, u On the Hocking 

 Valley Coal Fields and Its Iron Ores, with Notices of Furnace 

 Coals and Iron Smelting, followed by a Survey of the Coal 

 Trade of the West." Again in 1881 he published a still 

 more comprehensive volume of 152 pages, " On the Mineral 

 Resources of the Hocking Valley," in which, besides tracing 

 the identity of the coal beds of the district, he collected all 

 the information and analysis hitherto published bearing on 

 the iron ore of the district, which previous to his former 

 report had been regarded as of little value. He supple- 

 mented his treatise with a section on the latest improvements 

 in the metallurgy of iron, giving one of the first descriptions 

 of the Thomas-Gilchrist method, and with a clear but concise 

 summary of the railroad communications of his favorite 

 region with the coal-producing and consuming centres of the 

 North and West. Without doubt his exertions between 

 1874 and 1881, and his insistence on the suitability of the 

 drv non- coking, Hocking coal for use in blast furnaces, 

 materially contributed to the increase in the coal and iron 

 production of southern 'Ohio; for the coal production in 

 1874 of somewhat over 1,000,000 tons rose in 1880 to 

 1,750,000 tons, and the production of iron in the Hocking 

 Valley increased from nil in 1874 to 90,000 tons in 1880. 

 The ultimate results have, however, not realized Hunt's very 

 sanguine, too sanguine, hopes, expressed in the concluding 

 paragraphs of both reports. 



" The bituminous coal of southeastern Ohio may, in its 

 geographical, commercial and industrial relations, be com- 

 pared to the anthracite of Pennsylvania. The latter, occupy- 



