CONFMAUGH FORMATION IN WEST VIRGINIA 209 



limestone and "large unbroken shells of Allorisma, Myalina, and other 

 forms are frequently found embedded in the upper part of the coal itself, 

 though still in contact with the overlying limestone." The Morgantown 

 sandstone forms bluffs along the Little Kanawha river at 40 to 50 feet 

 above the Ames. On the west side of the county the Mahoning interval 

 contains a sandstone at 422 to 482 feet below the Pittsburg, present in 

 wells near the junction of Wirt, Wood, and Jackson counties. The de- 

 tailed records in Wirt county begin, for the most part, below the usual 

 horizons of red beds, but one near Burning Springs shows the Pittsburg 

 reds.* 



Wood county, west of Wirt and Eitchie, adjoins Washington and Meigs 

 counties of Ohio. The Conemaugh is buried deeply, the Pittsburg coal 

 can not be identified with certainty in most of the count}-, the Pottsville 

 varies greatly in thickness, and the "Big Lime" is absent in the western 

 portions. 



In western Wirt the interval from Pittsburg coal to "Big Lime" is 

 about 1,260 feet, but under the Cowrun anticline of Washington county, 

 Ohio, that interval varies from 1,107 to 1,181 feet, and where the Pitts- 

 burg coal bed reappears farther south the measurement is about 1,120 

 feet. 



In the northern part of Wood county, about 2 miles south from Mari- 

 etta, one finds the "Big Bed" 100 feet thick and 118 feet above what 

 seems to be the Cowrun sandstone, 22 feet thick, 130 feet above a 

 micaceous sandstone, 76 feet thick and very like that at 4 miles west in 

 Ohio. The Mahoning interval holds only shale. Midway in the county 

 one finds the "Big Lime" at 1,220 feet below the top of a sandstone very 

 like that which farther south either overlies the Pittsburg directly or is 

 separated from it by a score of feet. This rests on a great mass of red 

 shale, 175 feet thick, broken in one well by 40 feet of shale. This red 

 bed, associated with the Pittsburg, has been mentioned as occurring in 

 central Wetzel and in central Bitchie. Here it extends upward into the 

 Monongahela formation. A second bed, 30 feet thick, begins at 220 feet 

 in one well, 210 in another, and a third, 72 feet in one, 105 in the other, 

 ends at 412 and 415 feet below the assumed place of the Pittsburg. In 

 the former well sandstone, extending from 412 to 465 and resting on 25 

 feet of red rock, underlies the red bed, but in the other this space is filled 

 by shale, and a double sandstone is at 465 to 510 resting on 30 feet of red 

 rock. It may be that these sandstones are the same, the smaller interval 

 due to disappearance of the shales in the western well. The lowest red 

 is unquestionably in the Allegheny. 



•I. C. White: Vol. \a, pp. 463, 465, 467-468; vol. ii, p. 261. 

 XVII — Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., Vol. 17. 1905 



