286 =. B, Andrews— Comparison between the Ohio and 
passes the Kanawha between Charleston and Kanawha falls, 
includes the Coal river field, and crosses the Guyandotte, the 
upper Twelve Pole, and Tug and Louisa forks of Big Sandy. 
This belt belongs geologically to a space in the vertical 
series, which is below the horizon of the base of the coal- 
measures in Obio and Western Pennsylvania. Yet below this 
group comes in another, which Prof. Fontaine designates as the 
Conglomerate series. If we replace the strata, now inclined on 
either side of the synclinal axis, in their original horizontal 
position, we find the proof of a vast depression of the surface 
in this portion of West Virginia at the beginning of the series 
of Productive coal-measures. It was doubtless a trough, a 
geosynclinal, according to Prof. Dana’s nomenclature, and a 
part of the great Appalachian system of the wrinkling and fold- 
ing of the continent. To the southeast there were at the time 
elevated lands of older formations, stretching along the same 
Appalachian line of disturbance and upheaval. 
On the northern and western side of this vast basin lay the 
feet of accumulations, I have seen, in all my extended ex lora- 
tions of the region, only a single limestone layer, and that 1m 
Webster County, on the head of Elk river. I had no oppor 
tunity to examine it for fossils. 
When at last, in the subsidence, this basin was filled, the 
waters came over the marginal P ateau to the north and west, 4 
Western Pennsylvania. The continuity a 
the sheet is often broken and large areas around the margin 0 
our Ohio coal-field show no conglomerate whatever. The first 
