534 PAL-K0NT0L0GICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



and their geological level fixed with such certainty that we could take 

 them as a point of comparison for the examination of others. 



Coal No. 2. We have not yet seen this bed satisfactorily in place 

 in Western Kentucky ; in fact, this coal may be united in the west with 

 No. 1, B, since I found at Beaver, at Johnstown, at Nelsonsville, and 

 other places, a coal which I think will prove the equivalent of Lesley's 

 cannel coal C, which contains apparently the same Lingula umbomta 

 as was found in the shales over No. 1, B, of Union county. There 

 appears to be a gradual diminution of the space between this cannel 

 bed C, of Pennsylvania, and the great bed below it going west; for, 

 though at some places in that state the distance is seventy feet, at Zanes- 

 ville, Ohio, it is only twelve feet ; at Hopwelltown, Ohio, five feet; and 

 at Nelsonsville, Ohio, only one foot, and sometimes only four inches. 

 Therefore, it would not be very remarkable if, in Kentucky, it should 

 be united with coal No. 1, B. Moreover, this bed is often wanting 

 either in its separate state or in conjunction with No. 1, B. In the last 

 case, the shales of the coal No. 1, B, are less bituminous, grayish, full 

 of plants only, and without shells. At the Breckinridge mines, it seems 

 to occupy the whole place of No. 1, B, and has influenced its trans- 

 formation into cannel. 



Coal No. 3. Near Mulford*s mines we were shown, as being proba- 

 bly the Ice-house coal, a scarcely opened bed, of which the remarka- 

 bly hard, greyish colored shales were marked with well preserved stems 

 of ferns, especially of Neuropteris Ursula, (pi. 6, fig. 4>) Being un- 

 able to see more of this coal than a few shales, and being uncertain as 

 to its true level, we could make no characteristic and reliable descrip- 

 tion of it. But judging from a palseontological point of view, No. 3 

 coal, seen at Hawesville, is not the same as the one mentioned at Mul- 

 ford, as the probable Ice*house coal. It is much more likely referred 

 to coal D, of Lesley's manual, which is extensively worked at Zanes- 

 ville, (two to four feet thick,) where its shales are full of shells, espe- 

 cially of large Produdus and Spirifer. I should not have a doubt of 

 their being coeval if it was not for the absence of limestone above this 

 <joal at Zanesville, where the eight feet shales are covered with forty 

 feet of sandstone. But the limestone of this coal is a local formation. 

 In his general description of the lower coals, Mr. Lesley indicates a 

 limestone B, separated from coal D by fifty feet shales And even at 



