West Virginia sides of the Alleghany Coal-field. 287 
coal marshes grew in the hollows and depressions of the 
Waverly, depressions formed, it may be, wholly or in part, by 
erosions from surface drainage during the long period in which 
the formation had remained high and dry land. After the 
whole plateau had been submerged the same process of fillin 
up, and marsh-forming and coal-making, went on, as has already 
been described, with the exception that the waters were more 
habitable and the layers of fossiliferous limestone show the 
remains of crinoid, mullusk and fish. 
means the last in the upward series. er 
West Virginia, probably 1,200 to 1,500 feet of coal-measure 
rocks, with several seams of coal. This would give from 4,300 
to 4,500 feet of productive coal-measures in that favored State. 
No other State in the Union contains so great a vertical range. 
This great Kanawha basin or trough originally extended to the 
south or southwest so as to include the area in which the coals 
of Montgomery county, Va., were formed, for these coals are 
doubtless the equivalents of the lowest on New river, as are 
also the remnants and outliers of coal in Tazewell, Russell, and 
Scott counties. 
hessee, w 
along the line of the geosynclinal depression, was carried 
i e 
on entucky, on the northwestern side of the 
synelinal axis, were not involved in the movement. In south- 
ern Tennessee, Prof. Safford reports in one of his sections only 
the upper 1,700 feet having doubtless been removed by denu- 
dation. If not thus removed, the limestone was not carried 
