124 I. C. WHITE — HORIZON OF THE KANAWHA BLACK FLINT 



the northern line of the state to more than 2,500 feet on the Kanawha 

 and New rivers ; that the Potts ville conglomerate thickens from 450 feet 

 to 1,400 feet in the same distance. He also agrees with me that the Alle- 

 gheny series is 300 feet thick at the north, and that the Kanawha series 

 is over 1,000 feet thick at the south. Why should the expansion of these 

 sediments cease with the deposition of the Pottsville? Is it not more 

 logical, aside from any evidence, to expect this thickening to affect the 

 other formations above the Pottsville ? In other words, that the 300 feet 

 of Allegheny sediments and six coals at the north should merge into the 

 1,000 feet of similar sediments and the same number of coals'at the south- 

 west. Why should the analogy be interrupted and the Allegheny sedi- 

 ments shrivel up 150 feet when it is admitted that everything else below 

 them has expanded more than threefold? Why should the Conemaugh 

 decrease 200 feet in this direction instead of increasing by that amount, 

 as my Charleston section shows on page 85 of Bulletin No. 65 of the 

 United States Geological Survey ? In this section there is given a meas- 

 urement from the Pittsburg coal down to and including the black flint. 

 This interval is practically a vertical measurement, since the Pittsburg 

 coal is found in the summits of the hills only 2 miles north from Charles- 

 ton, and the black flint passes below water level within the city limits. 

 With due allowance for northward rise of the strata, the section foots up 

 only 800 feet. The Conemaugh formation is seldom less than 600 feet in 

 thickness at the northern line of the state, and frequently 650 to 700, and 

 yet if we accept David White's correlation of the black flint as represent- 

 ing the Ferriferous limestone near the base of the Allegheny formation we 

 are forced to believe that this 800 feet of strata at Charleston contains not 

 only all of the Conemaugh, but also nearly all oj 'ike Allegheny, or, in other 

 words, that in passing from the northern line of the state to the Kana- 

 wha, while the three other formations (Greenbrier, Mauch Chunk, Potts- 

 ville) have each thickened up three or four fold, and an intermediate for- 

 mation (Kanawha) has thickened from to 1,000 feet, the Conemaugh 

 and Allegheny, which have a combined thickness of 900 to 1,000 feet 

 even at the northern line of the state, have shriveled up to only 800 at 

 Charleston. The mere statement of such a proposition is sufficient to 

 raise very serious doubts of its truth, as well as to show the stratigraphic 

 fallacies involved in Dr David White's conclusions from the standpoint 

 of sedimentation alone. 



But as my field studies on the question of tracing the coals below the 

 Upper Freeport, southwestward from the Pennsylvania line to the 

 Kanawha region, are not yet complete, I shall postpone the considera- 

 tion of their equivalency in the two sections until another time. 



The Masontown coal of the Conemaugh formation has proven a very 



