4 ORIGINAL CONNECTION OF THE EASTERN' AND 



tion shows us that if we but protract the plane given us by the upper 



surface of the two fields across the intervening space, we would replace 

 the beds in the gap that separates them. This suggestion of original con- 

 tinuity that is made to the eye on simple inspection, is abundantly borne 

 .nit by other evidence, which I will now proceed to consider, taking up 

 the several series of facts in the following order: 



1st. The physical evidences of a continuous sea or swamp over the 

 whole of Kentucky at the several stages of the carboniferous period. 



2d. The vital evidences of a similar unity of the physical conditions at 

 the before mentioned time. 



3d. The evidences of the amount of wear to which this district has been 

 subjected since its last continued depression below the level of the sea. 



The evidences of a physical nature going to prove the former existence 

 of any particular series of deposits in any area where they are no longer 

 found, may differ very much in different conditions, but are in the main 

 limited to two classes of facts. In the first place, we may have the debris 

 of ancient deposits lying in variously distributed ruins in the region where 

 the beds they represent have long since been destroj'ed; in the second 

 place, we may have a given district showing by its topography, inherited 

 from a more ancient time, that it has had its drainage system formed in 

 beds other than those which now cover its surface. 



Searching over the district that lies between the ragged borders of the 

 eastern and western coal-fields, I have found at many points the most 

 unquestionable indications of ruined carboniferous beds. In the very cen- 

 tre of the Muldraugh-hill escarpment of the Subcarbonifei'ous series, the 

 beds of lower St. Louis limestone are covered by the waste of a conglom- 

 erate that is no longer in place. This waste consists not only of a great 

 quantity of detached pebbles of quartz, but also of considerable slabs of a 

 coarse ferruginous sandstone with like quartz pebbles, the slabs with their 

 angles unrounded, and evidently not transported by water. -This waste, 

 occurring upon the high summits and not upon the lowlands, puts it 

 beyond a doubt that it is the waste of a conglomerate that once capped 

 these hills. The character of this conglomerate is quite unmistakable; 

 no one familiar with the geology of this district can doubt that it is from 

 the Subcarboniferous conglomerates, the millstone grits of many geolo- 

 gists. The lower lying rocks of our Kentucky series are so well known 

 as to make it quite impossible to suppose that there is any other con- 



