n n THE ORIGINAL CONNECTION OF THE EASTERN AND 

 w ESTERN < OAL-FIELD8 OF THE OHIO \ M.l.KV. 



Among all the debated matters concerning the development "t' American 



I'liv. [>erhapa cone have been the Bubjecl of a more extended discus- 

 sion than the question of the original relation "t' the several coal-fields of 

 the carboniferous era that ii within the N alley of the Mississippi <>n the 



le it has been maintained that those areas were originally parts "t" 

 on.- and the Bame ii«'l<l. owing their separation to tit*- wasting the) have 

 ed; "ii the other, that they were, from the beginning, distinctly sep- 

 arated areas, and have had their physical ;ui<1 vital problems as in<li\ idu- 

 alized as are those of widely separated - 



It li : ially contended, and this with a great deal of (rigor and 



that the eastern and western basins of the Ohio Valley, commonly 

 known as the Appalachian and the Illinois fields, were, at their time of 

 formation, separated from each other by the ridge known as the Cincin- 

 nati axis. 

 A ireful study of this problem in tli<- State of Kentucky, where alone 



the data for it- solution, has served t" convince me that there is a 

 considerable error involved in this generally accepted opinion, an error 

 likely, it' it continues unasaailed, to confuse all our notions of the geologi- 

 cal history of th ntinent I shall therefore set forth in brief the nature 



of th-- evidence that has led me to the opinion that these coal areas, lying 

 to the east and west of the Cincinnati anticlinal, were not only originally 



united into one area, but were actually inected down to a verj 



time, in the geological sense of the word. 



logical map of Kentucky, published by the Sur- 

 rey, "ill shoti that these two fields have now their nearest escarpments 

 within less than eighty miles of each other. It will also show that there 

 ire man) over-outliers, which are clearly relics of a once continuous field, 

 which diminish 1 1 1 • - gap between these coal basins, so that at one point 

 not over forty miles between the outlying remnants of either field. 

 Standing upon the heights of either escarpment, the es over the 



intervening tntry to the outliers on tli<- other - \ little i»l 



