CAHABA COAL FIELD: GENERAL DESCRIPTION. 5 
of other regions, are closest along the lines of jatitude. 
The Coal Measures of Arkansas, for instance, and the In- 
dian Territory, resemble our measures much more than do 
those of the Northern and Northwestern States. The aggre- 
gate thickness of the Cahaba Coal Measures is 5,525 feet; 
the Arkansas and Indian Territory Coal Measures have 
over 8,000 feet, while Illinois and Indiana have only about 
700 feet in thickness of measures. Another peculiarity in 
the Cahaba coal seams is the small amount of sulphur in 
them. While the miners of Illinois are dulling up half a 
dozen picks a day on flakes of sulphur, most of our miners 
in the Cahaba field do not hit a flake of sulphur oftener 
than once a month. In some of our Cahaba seams a miner 
could not collect a single pound of sulphur flakes in a 
month. The cause of this absence of pyrites or sulphur in 
our Cahaba seams can not be explained. 
The old idea that our coal seams have been formed from 
a tropical forest, composed mostly of a large growth of 
trees is entirely erroneous. An occurrence that happened 
over thirty years ago, eradicated those ideas, and convinced 
me that trees of large growth were the exception, and not 
the rule; at that time it became part of my duty to test and 
examine a thin seam for a distance of forty (40) miles, and 
I found its maximum thickness six inches, with a minimum 
of two inches; this fact and the associated fossils connected 
with it, convinced me that the vegetation more nearly re- 
sembled that of the peat bogs of our day, than anything 
now existing; in fact, convinced me that the order of forma- 
tion was from a peat bog to imbedded strata of lignite, and 
from lignite to the hard bituminous seams of coal now tak- 
ing our attention, the shrinkage or subsidence of the part 
of the earth on which they existed, allowing these peat 
bogs to become covered over with sandy or clayey sediment 
by the action of water, and a cessation of subsidence, or an 
elevation, causing the next bog or seam to form. The best 
evidence of the absence of large trees, (except a few scat- 
tered ores,) may be obtained by asking any intelligent old 
miner that has spent about a third of his time for the last 
twenty or thirty years underground, to state approximately 
the number of fossil trees with a diameter over six inches 
