MAHONING COUNTY. 787 



drainage lines, though these may have been partly filled up, and their 

 connections obliterated before the peat was formed that subsequently 

 became coal. The connecting links may also have been in places 

 removed by the erosion to which the surface was subjected, subsequen 

 to the formation of the coal bed, and when the overlying sandstone was 

 deposited. The future working of the mines in the Mahoning Valley, 

 will doubtless throw much light upon this subject. Maps have been 

 procured of most of the basins which have been worked, and these with 

 such others as may be hereafter obtained, will be laid down on the gen- 

 eral map of the Mahoning Valley coal field which is to accompany a 

 report that will form part of the volume on Economic Geology. 



The peculiar valley-like character of some of the basins is well illus- 

 trated by .that in which the Foster and Kyle shafts are located in the 

 southern part of Youngstown. This has all the characters of some of the 

 peat-filled valleys which may be seen in the northern counties of Ohio 

 at the present time ; and in this basin the drainage would seem to have 

 been westward, as the coal lies lower, and in a broader trough at the 

 shaft of the Foster Coal Co. than at the Kyle shaft. 



It is hardly necessary to say that the old valleys, if such they are, 

 which now hold the coal, have no relation to the present surface, since 

 they were buried under many hundred feet of strata of various kinds, and 

 the present surface is altogether the result of modern erosion. Hence, 

 the only methods of explorations of untested territory are by boring, and 

 by following the "• swamps " wherever they may lead in the basins that 

 are worked. It is also true that no surface indications have any value as 

 guides, for the discovery of unknown basins below, and from the narrow- 

 ness of many of the coal deposits no territory can be regarded as fairly 

 tested until it has been pierced with numerous holes. This gives en- 

 couragement to hope that in the large area within the country which 

 may hold Coal No. 1, many valuable coal basins will yet be found; and 

 the experience of the past, as well as the general knowledge we have of 

 the circumstances which have affected the distribution of the coal, point 

 to the inference that new- basins will, from time to time, be discovered 

 through many years ; and that the exhaustion of the coal deposits of the 

 Mahoning Valley, which has been so often predicted, is not likely to 

 occur at any near period. 



The question of the extension southward of the series of coal basins 

 which underlie the northern townships of the county, is one of great 

 practical importance, and one in regard to which there is considerable 

 diversity of opinion. It is held by some who have given considerable 

 attention to the subject that all the important deposits of Coal No. 1 



