DEPOSITION OF THE COAL 335 



dently based upon the old supposition that this barren area would hold 

 as much coal as any other portion of the Appalachian field. 



Method of Deposition of the Coal 



From this brief statement of the facts in the case it would appear that 

 the several coal formations, beginning with the oldest — Pocahontas, New 

 Kiver, Kanawha, Allegheny, Conemaugh, and Monongahela — were depos- 

 ited in narrow belts or fringes, 20 to 30 miles in breadth, around *he bor- 

 ders of the great Appalachian basin, each higher series extending farther 

 toward the center of the trough than its predecessor. This condition of 

 affairs is shown by the distribution of the colors on the West Virginia 

 coal map, and which in its uncolored portion also indicates the central 

 barren zone. The query naturally arises : Why were no valuable coal 

 beds formed in this great central trough, where the older geologists and 

 many of the younger ones, it appears, supposed the coal beds would be 

 thickest and most numerous? The question is a puzzling one, but this 

 absence of valuable coal deposits is due most probably to the fact that the 

 central region of the Appalachian coal field was covered with water to 

 such a depth that vegetation could not secure a foothold, and hence while 

 sediments accumulated there to practically the same thickness as in other 

 portions of the basin, they consist only of shales, sandstones, and lime- 

 stones, the latter being in greater proportion than where the coal accumu- 

 lated in commercial quantity. Of course, there will be some islands of 

 commercial coal in this long and broad barren zone, but they will be local 

 and of small extent. 



Duration of the northern Appalachian Field 



This shortage of coal brings to the citizens of the Pittsburg region, 

 the present manufacturing center of the world, the most serious problem 

 that has ever confronted them. They have been told that they originally 

 had 430,000,000,000 tons of coal in the three states that surround them, 

 and that it would suffice for 150 to 200 years, while the truth is they have 

 only about one-half of that amount, and with the present wasteful mining 

 methods it will last only 50 years. If this waste continues, some of you 

 in this audience will see the finish in the northern Appalachian field of 

 all cheap and easily obtained coal. Many of you do not credit these 

 statements. They are capable of demonstration to those whose minds 

 are open to reason and the irresistible logic of facts. 



The area of the great Pittsburg bed, that wonderful coal seam to which 

 Pittsburg owes its very existence, is known almost to the acre. Pennsyl- 

 vania had remaining 1,090,000 acres of it at the beginning of 1908, and 

 she has several thousand acres less now, since her annual production from 

 this one coal bed is approximately 95,000,000 tons. This represents an 



