538 PAL^ONTOLOGICAL -REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



verized, cover them in an indistinct mass. Though I cannot name 

 any peculiar species, in connection with this bed of coal, since all the 

 examined remains were too much broken to be recognizable, the gener- 

 al appearance of the shales is peculiar enough to serve as a reliable 

 character. We knew this coal again at first sight when we came to it 

 with Mr. Cox, two and an half miles from Hartford, Ohio county, 

 Kentucky, where it is worked near the Owensboro' road; and still 

 again, lately, while on a tour of exploration in the southern part of 

 the coal basin of Ohio, I knew it at once when I saw it at Steiger's 

 vein, near Athens, and from the inspection of the shales alone, fixed at 

 once its true geological level. 



Coal No. 7, is a thin bed, which we did not see any where in the 

 western coal-fields of Kentucky, but of which we examined the shales 

 exposed in a rivulet on the Saline Coal Company's property, in Illinois. 

 These shales contain a few shells, but particularly some very small 

 scales and teeth of fishes. These teeth are sharp, straight, and of a 

 different form from those found in the beds above. I thought at first 

 that it was not worth while mentioning this coal, since it is generally 

 very thin— for it has been passed through by a shaft at Mulford's, and 

 has been found to be there about thirty inches thick ; at Holloway's 

 boring, near Henderson, its place is occupied by a black shale, with 

 only some trace of coal; and in the Illinois coal-fields, it is only a 

 few inches thick. But though not valuable in a material point of view, 

 this bed becomes important by its characteristic fossils, and its geolo- 

 logical position. Being lately at Athens, on an exploring tour through 

 the coal-fields of southern Ohio, I had the opportunity to survey, on 

 the property of Horace Willson, Esq., a bed of shales which was 

 thought to contain a vein of coal. I collected there teeth and scales 

 of fishes, and after a comparative examination, I found them to be of 

 the same species as those which we collected with Mr. B. T. Cox on 

 the Saline Company's property. This bed of shales near Athens, 

 Ohio, contains only a few inches coal, and its position is about one hun- 

 dred feet below the Pittsburg coal, which is worked somewhat higher 

 in the hills. The identity of both these beds of western Kentucky 

 and Ohio veins, as we said before, is of great importance, since 

 it enables us to point out, with some accuracy, the place that the 

 Pittsburg coal occupies in the western coal-fields. This place, as wa 



