208 J. J. STEVENSON CARBONIFEROUS OF APPALACHIAN BASltf 



it rests on Black slate at the Upper Freeport horizon. In western Ritchie 

 the sandstones are very uncertain, some wells showing only shales above 

 the Buffalo-Mahoning, while others show occasional streaks, and in one 

 well a sandstone 55 feet thick begins at 305 feet below the Pittsburg, 

 representing in great part the Cowrun horizon. The red beds are as 

 irregular as the sandstones. At Harrisville the first red is at 85 feet, 

 and thence to 470 feet are three beds, 20, 170, and 165 feet — in all, 355 

 feet. In a well on Whiskey run the first red underlies the Pittsburg coal 

 and is 40 feet thick; the second, representing the "Big Red" and Pitts- 

 burg reds, begins at 197 feet and is 150 feet thick, while a third, 30 feet 

 thick, begins at 430 feet ; but in a neighboring well the great middle mass 

 is altogether Avanting. The same contrast appears at Cairo, where thick 

 beds in one well are wholly unrepresented in another barely half a mile 

 distant. Coal beds are reported at various localities. as occurring at six 

 horizons below the Pittsburg coal bed. The last two are in the Alle- 

 gheny. It would not be difficult to make correlations for the others, but 

 except in the numbers, there would be no justification for such correla- 

 tion. No coal beds are recorded in the Conemaugh of Doddridge; the 

 records of Wetzel, Tyler, and Pleasants are almost equally barren, and 

 the references to coal in the Ritchie records are uncertain, a great num- 

 ber noting no coal. If these coals be coal and not black slate, they can 

 be only accumulations of drifted material at best and probably they bear 

 no relation to the coal beds near whose horizons they occur.* 



Wirt county is west and southwest of Ritchie. On the eastern border 

 the Pittsburg coal bed is 1,260 to 1,278 feet above the "Big Lime," and 

 the first sandstone, 15 feet, is at 408 to 423 feet; the second, 60 feet, 

 begins at 553 feet below the Pittsburg. Three wells at Burning Springs, 

 a few miles farther west, show a sandstone, 34 to 77 feet thick, whose 

 top is at 686 to 688 feet above the "Big Lime," while the top of the thick 

 sandstone beginning at 553 below the Pittsburg on the eastern border is 

 at 725 above the "Big Lime." If 260 feet be taken as the interval from 

 Pittsburg coal to Ames limestone, the sandstone near Burning Springs 

 is 529 feet below the Pittsburg, for the Ames limestone is at the surface. 

 There the sandstone is 99 feet below a 15-foot sandstone, while on the 

 eastern border it is 130 feet below the same sandstone. The interval be- 

 tween Pittsburg and Ames is 235 feet at Cowrun, 30 miles north in Ohio, 

 and the intervals increase in this direction. The upper sandstone is 

 toward the top of the Upper Mahoning and the thick lower sandstone, per- 

 sistent in much of the county, belongs within the Allegheny. The Har- 

 lem coal bed is shown near Burning Springs, where it underlies the Ames 



* I. C. White : Vol. 1, pp. 302-306, 313, 317. 



