54 Notes upon the Geology of the Western States. 



seen along the Ohio, and at Hawesville and other places on the 

 Kentucky side of the river. 



In this notice, I shall present only some of the results of my 

 observations ; the details of each rock, with other matter, will 

 form the subject of a more extended notice hereafter. 



I have already stated that the conglomerate or fundamental 

 member of the coal formation is every where to be recognized, 

 whenever we come to that point in the series ; it is identical 

 with a rock of the same character in southern New York, and 

 the bordering counties of Pennsylvania, and holds the same po- 

 sition, preserves the same essential characters, and contains the 

 same fossils. The lower coal beds can be seen immediately suc- 

 ceeding this rock at the falls of Cuyahoga river, on the farm of 

 Henry Newberry, Esq., and also in Jackson, Lawrence and other 

 counties of Ohio. The same may be seen at Hawesville, Ky., 

 and on the opposite side of the river in Indiana. With the ex- 

 ception of the space occupied by lower rocks in western Ohio 

 and eastern Indiana, this rock forms a continuous mass of re- 

 markably uniform character, from the eastern part of Pennsylva- 

 nia to the Mississippi river. 



The old red sandstone group in its red color, and bearing scales 

 of Holoptychus and other fishes, I have already stated in my 

 report, thins out on the Genessee river in Alleghany county in 

 New York, and does not appear again between that place and 

 the Mississippi river, in the direction of my observations. Neither 

 in western New York nor in Ohio, so far as I have seen, is there 

 any rock separating the Chemung group from the conglomerate. 



The Chemung group belongs to the old red or Devonian sys- 

 tem, and which in New York Mr. Lyell recognizes as bearing a 

 most striking lithological similarity to the lower part of the old 

 red sandstone in Forfarshire and other parts of Scotland, both in 

 the grey thinly laminated sandstones and associated green shales. 

 This group extends westward through Ohio, bearing its most 

 essential characters, but there and in Indiana, more than in most 

 parts of New York, it becomes more evidently distinct from the 

 Silurian system. The rocks of this group may be seen in Ohio 

 at the Cuyahoga falls, occupying a thickness of not much more 

 than one hundred feet, while in New York it cannot be less than 

 one thousand or iifteen hundred feet. At Akron, and numerous 

 other places to the southwest of this, along the western margin 



