550 PAL.EONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 



enceto the place where they have found, and if possible to the supposed 

 geological level of it, will prove the most valuable contribution. 



I thought at first to examine, in detail, the question of the identi- 

 ty of all the coal-fields of the Mississippi valley, including the great 

 Apalachian and the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. But a scientific 

 discussion would take too much space in a local report like this, and 

 I can only offer out some general remarks, which will at least explain 

 this belief: that the western Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana .coal- 

 fields were formed in continuity with the great Apalachian basin, and 

 the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. The comparison will be bet- 

 ter understood by looking at the description of the lower coals, as it 

 is given on pp. 94 and 95 of Lesley's excellent Manual of coal. His 

 coal A, a thin bed, the first above the conglomerates, is sometimes 

 present in western Ohio, as at Nelsonville, where it is about two feet 

 thick, and in Virginia, as on the great Kanawha, near Charlestown, 

 where it is eigteen inches thick; but, nevertheless, it is scarcely seen 

 or penetrated in the borings for salt. As the system of the lower 

 coals is less developed at the west, a circumstance easily explained by 

 our general remarks, this bed of coal, when formed in the eastern coal- 

 fields of Kentucky, is only a thin layer. In a shaft of the Old Distil- 

 lery min«s, at Caseyville, this bed is said to have been reached, and 

 found to be one to two feet thick, Bat truly we could not find any 

 reliable account of this. 



Coal B, of Lesley's Manual, viz: our coal No, 1, B, is in the west- 

 ern Kentucky coal-fields, as well as in Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsyl- 

 vania, a most reliable vein, and undoubtedly the best of the whole se- 

 ries, considering the extent of the surface where it becomes exposed. 

 It thickens to the east, and in the anthracite fields it forms the Mam- 

 moth vein, and many others of the largest veins which have been worked. 

 As a proof that its characters are everywhere the same, I quote a few 

 lines of my palseontological report prepared and delivered in 1852, for 

 the Geological State Survey of Pennsylvania: 



"As soon as we come to the lower strata, the presence of large vege- 

 tables becomes apparent, first in the great quantity of Sligmaria 

 abounding in the shales of the Diamond and Primrose veins, then in the 

 Zepidodendron, and some large ferns which distinguish the Mammoth 

 vein. This vein especially merits to be mentioned for its peculiar 

 flora. The roof slates, of gray color, ordinarily charged with nodules 



