HOLMES COUNTY. 553 



An opening in the same hill, a half a mile south, on Leonard Matthews's 

 land, shows limestone two feet, coal four feet, upper half cannel, lower 

 semi-cannel ; fire-clay eight to ten inches ; compact, drab, calcareous shale, 

 with shells of the blue limestone, one foot. AtJHenry Harger's saw-mill, 

 in Paint township, the outcrop shows four to five feet of coal, the upper 

 part bituminous, the lower cannel. In Mechanic township this coal is 

 reported from seven to eight feet thick, a true cannel coal. It was ex- 

 posed by boring and drifting during the excitement incident to the first 

 manufacture of illuminating oil from coal, and the reports of the borings 

 may not be altogether reliable. 



In a shallow valley, in this township, several acres of this coal have 

 been burned out, and the roof, which was here a calcareous ferruginous 

 shale, covers the surface, and is found in the banks on each side, pre- 

 senting the appearance of an uniform blackband ore after it has passed 

 through the fire. The burning of the coal occurred so long ago that the 

 valley has become covered with a n ixed forest, the trees of the same size 

 and varieties as over the unburned territory. 



In, the northern part of Salt Creek township two openings in this coal, 

 something less than half a miie apart, and on the same hill, give the 

 following section : 



N 



Limestone 2 



2 



2 



2 



In which S. represents the southern and N. the northern opening. It is 

 evident that the subsidence which brought in a'mud deposit on the sur- 

 face of the old coal marsh was along an axis in the neighborhood of the 

 first opening at S., where the growth of the coal vegetation was uninter- 

 rupted. If the subsidence northward continued at the same increasing 

 rate, in less than five miles the two benches of the limestone coal would be 

 represented by twenty feet of shale, and would be regarded as distinct 

 deposits. Between this limestone and its coal there are in places in the 

 county fifteen feet of shale, while ordinarily the limestone rests directly 

 upon the coal, or is separated from it by only a few inches of shale. The 

 result of many hundreds of barometrical measurements between this and 

 the grey limestone show intervals varying all the way from twenty-two 



