KENTUCKY 93 



Feet 



13. Conglomerate, coarse sandstone [Sharon] 100 to 



14. Shale and non-plastic clay [Scioto ville] 19 



15. Coal bed [Jackson shaft j 



16. Shale 8 



to the Waverly or, where present, to the Lower Carboniferous limestone. 

 The Upper Mercer coal bed appears to be unrepresented, " Coal bed 

 number 3 " being clearly the Lower Mercer. It will be referred to in 

 succeeding pages as the Mercer coal bed. 



The lowest coal bed, that at the horizon of the Jackson Shaft bed, is 

 of somewhat uncertain occurrence, as the overlying sandstone frequently 

 replaces it as well as a portion of the underlying beds. It is present 

 along the Ohio river at some localities in western Greenup, and is seen 

 occasionally in western Carter. Mr Lesley says that it is exposed fre- 

 quently in the latter county along streams entering Little Sandy river 

 from the west. Its thickness varies from 1 to 28 inches, and it is sel- 

 dom of economic importance even locally, though its coal, like that at 

 Jackson, Ohio, is usually of excellent quality. The Scioto ville clay 

 overlying it was seen at many places along the Ohio, and it was ob- 

 served at localities in western Carter, even to the southwest corner on 

 the Rowan county line. 



The interval to the Sharon coal bed above shows extreme variation. 

 The Sharon conglomerate is practically absent in much of northern 

 Greenup or is represented at most by a thin sandstone overlying the 

 Sciotoville clay. Throughout western Greenup it is comparatively thin, 

 seldom more than 30 feet, until toward the southern border, where an 

 exposure shows it 90 feet thick. There is a narrow area in western 

 Carter where this conglomerate seems to be wanting, but in central 

 Carter, the space drained by Tygarts creek and the Little Sandy, it is 

 thick — 30 feet in the northern part of the county and increasing to 90 

 feet or more near the southern border. In like manner it increases 

 westwardly from the area of vacancy, for Lesley found it 150 feet thick 

 in Rowan county west from Carter. Crandall describes this Sharon as 

 a very coarse ferruginous sandstone, with some layers of quartz -pebble 

 conglomerate. It is much cross-bedded and the inclination of this bed- 

 ding is very uniformly toward the southeast — a condition observed in 

 all exposures across Lawrence county to the West Virginia line. 



Beds overlying the Sharon are reached occasionally in the high hills 

 of western Greenup and Carter, especially where that sandstone is very 

 thin, but satisfactory sections for the most part were obtained only east- 

 ward from Tygarts creek. In northern Carter the Main Block ore is at 



XIII— Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 15, 1903 



