330 F. V. Hayden on Coal in Nebraska, 
At Atchison and Leavenworth, Kansas, and at St. J oseph, 
Mo., where the upper Coal-measures are several hundred feet 
lower than at Nebraska City or Omaha, borings were made 
about 400 feet with no better success, 
Mr. Brodhead, a geologist attached to the Missouri State 
Geological Survey, studied with a great deal of care a series of 
beds of the upper Coal-measures in northern Missouri which he 
regarded as 2000 feet in thickness without finding a seam of 
coal more than 2 or 23 feet in thickness. 
. In the valley of the Desmoines river, Iowa, 75 to 100 miles 
east of the Missouri river, coal beds have been found by Dr. 
White, State Geologist, varying from 1 to 7 feet in thickness ; 
but the rocks including these beds are regarded by him as the 
age of the lower Coal-measures. Indeed the upper Coal-meas- 
ures of the west are regarded as the barren coal-measures, 
are simply the western extension of them, thinning out and 
eradicate losing all the thin seams of coal and shale and 
nearly all the beds of clay and loose sands, leaving for the most 
; a massive beds of limestone, 
than probable that coal in paying quantities will never be found 
ithin the limits of the state of Nebraska. If this statement 
_ exist in Dakota territory at all, so that along the Missouri river - 
there is a very large district of wonderful fertility, almost tree- 
less and destitute of mineral fuel. This fact at once directs our 
attention to the lignite formations in the region of the Rocky 
mountains. It is to be hoped that the general government 
| see the impor of making appropriations for their 
nation at an early day. 
