490 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 



This is a rich ore, and would make an iron adapted to Bessemer steel. 

 If it can be found in adequate quantity it will be of inestimable value. 



FEARING TOWNSHIP. 



This township is situated on Duck Creek, by the waters of which it 

 is drained. The largest of the affluents of Duck Creek in the township 

 is Whipple's Run, which rises in the north-western part of Lawrence 

 township. The land is hilly, but in the valleys and on the hill-sides 

 the soil is good. As a rule, the soil is less fertile on the ridges. There 

 is less limestone in the hills than in Salem township, on the north. The 

 so-called limestone coal, the equivalent of the Pomeroy seam, is found 

 in the northern part of the township, near the mouth of Whipple's Run, 

 and in that vicinity. Here it has been mined to some extent for neigh- 

 borhood use, and formerly it was taken by the plank-road to Marietta. 

 On Whipple's Run the coal is part cannel, while three-quarters of a mile 

 below, where it was taken in low water in the bed of Duck Creek, near 

 Mr. Flanders's, it is reported to have been entirely bituminous. This 

 seam of coal in this vicinity well illustrates the changes which some- 

 times take place in the character of the coal in short distances. In the 

 bed of the creek it is the usual bituminous variety, while as we go north 

 a part of the seam is changed into cannel — perhaps in some places it is 

 all changed, but when we reach the neighborhood of Salem village it 

 is found to be bituminous again. If we adopt the better theory of the 

 origin of cannel coal, there was here a portion of the old coal marsh, in 

 which a part of the vegetation was so changed, probably by maceration 

 in water, as to lose its structure and become a mere mass of vegetable 

 mud or muck. This muck, when buried and compressed and bitumin- 

 ized ; forms the cannel coal. Unfortunately with this vegetable mud 

 there was commingled other mud in the form of clayey sediments, and 

 thus the cannel coal now contains a larger quantity of ash than could 

 come from coal formed of pure vegetable muck. 



Analysis op Cannel Coal of Whipple's Eun. 

 Specific gravity 1.500 



Water 1.00 



Ash 26.00 



Volatile combustible matter 31.00 



Fixed carbon 42.00 



Total 100.00 



Gas per pound in cubic feet, 2.73. 

 Ash, gray. Coke, pulverulent. 



Several years ago, when coal-oil was distilled from cannel coal, and 

 before wells were bored for petroleum, a small experimental oil distillery 



