Cannel Coal. — Cabinet of the Atheneum at Zanesville. 79 



in the " section of Putnam hill." I procured and brought away, a 

 number of beautiful specimens, some of which were replaced by chal- 

 cedony, and quite translucent. 



Cannel coal. — Six miles west of this place, in Licking county, 

 but still in the siliceous deposits, there has been recently discovered 

 a fine bed of Cannel coal, similar to that near Cambridge, in Guern- 

 sey Co. Ohio. I did not visit the place myself, but have no doubt 

 of the fact ; an intelligent friend assuring me he had specimens from 

 that spot. These deposits having been subjected to a very con- 

 siderable degree of heat, would be the proper place to look for cannel 

 coal, as this species appears to be the common bituminous coal, re- 

 duced to a pasty or semi-fluid state by heat after it was deposited. 

 Its fracture is similar to that of a vitrified substance, highly conchoidal. 



This region has been a favorite spot with the aborigines ; large 

 heaps of fragments are found where arrow heads had been manufac- 

 tured. Many of these pieces are of the first quality for gun flints, 

 and are much prized by the neighboring hunters. Mounds are also 

 common; a very large one near this place is constructed of sandstone, 

 made up of fragments of such size as a man can conveniently lift. It 

 is at least sixty feet in diameter at the base, and fifteen feet in height. 

 The mound is the more interesting, from the fact, that no sandstone 

 is found on the surface, within half a mile of it. The flint rocks 

 were perhaps, considered sacred and too valuable to be applied to 

 such a purpose, although covering the ground. Large springs of 

 very pure water are common in this formation. After returning to 

 Zanesville, I visited the coal beds and examined the stratification 

 of "Putnam hill." 



Cabinet of the Atheneum at Zanesville. — May 22: I passed the 

 day in examining the cabinet of the Atheneum. It contains a num- 

 ber of very interesting remains of the gigantic mastodon ; consisting 

 of molar teeth and large portions of the tusks. A number of rare 

 fossil shells, amongst which I noticed Ammonites Hildrethi and Pho- 

 ladomya elongata, with the undescribed bones of some extinct ani- 

 mals, several of which were found in excavating the Ohio canal, in 

 a peat swamp, two miles north of Nashport, in the deep cutting be- 

 tween the valley of the Muskingum and the Licking, on Wakitomika 

 Creek. The mud in this swamp was very deep and of a thin fluid 

 character, similar to that of some of the bogs on the sides of the moun- 

 tains in Scotland. It occasioned much trouble and expense, crowd- 

 ing in laterally at night a quantity equal to all that the workmen could 

 throw out by day ; it was finally overcome by a frame work of tim- 



