684 liEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



feet thick, and of good quality. All the facts indicate that the coal ig 

 persistent over this whole area, and that it is of strictly first class qual- 

 ity. It is quite natural that the coal should be first worked where it is 

 well up in the hills, and can be mined by drifting ; but when its horizon 

 is at a moderate depth below the bottom of the valleys, there is the 

 marked advantage that no coal has been lost through the erosion of the 

 valleys — there is no poor " crop coal." Shafts may be sunk in immedi- 

 ate proximity to the valley roads, the cost often being much less than 

 that of the construction of the long trestles which are needed to connect 

 the mines on the hill sides with the roads in the valleys. These coals 

 are not ordinarily the first to be developed, but the whole cost of mining 

 is no more than the average of drift mining, and the area of workable 

 coal may be regarded as equal to the surface area, so that the ultimate 

 value of the land is much greater than where erosion has carried away 

 a large percentage of the coal. 



bayley's eun coal, or coal number seven. 



At an average distance of about seventy or seventy-five feet above the 

 Great Vein, there is here another important coal, which has ordinarily 

 been regarded as the equivalent of the Stallsmith coal of the upper 

 Sunday Creek, although the interval between it and the Great Vein is 

 considerably less. But the Stallsmith coal is clearly No. 7, and the 

 thin coal above the Bayley's Run, with its associated iron ores, is every- 

 where suggestive of its identity with No. 7. A revision of the sections 

 at Millertown, and west of Buckingham, where are the openings which 

 have given the local names to these coals on the upper Sunday Creek, 

 shows clearly that the Bayley's Run and the Norris coals are the same, al- 

 though the interval between it and the Great Vein is on the average 

 considerably greater on the lower Sunday Creek. The coal has also pe- 

 culiarities quite different from the ordinary character of No. 7. 



It is a bright black, with a resinous lustre, burns with a long light 

 flame, and shows little sulphur ; in some of the openings forming a sin- 

 gle bench, in others having a thin shale parting near the top. In thick- 

 ness it ranges from four and one-half to five feet, and is generally a little 



