WHITE COUNTY. 69 



ferruginous, and affords a good quality of building stone. The thin 

 band of cinnamon-colored shale seems to have been formed from an 

 impalpable brown mud, and on splitting it in thin layers countless 

 numbers of minute shells like Posidonia are found covering the surface 

 of the slabs. 



In the bank of Skillet Fork, at Mill Shoals, there is an outcrop of thin 

 coal, with a bituminous shale and limestone, as shown in the following, 

 section : 



Ft. 



Hard shelly sandstone r 3 to 4 



Hard, black laminated slate, passing locally into clay shale 6 to 8 



Shale, with thin coal 2 to 3 



Hard, fine grained limestone '. 2 to 3 



Greenish, pebbly shale 2 



Sandy shale, in creek bed 1 



These beds afford no distinct fossils, but the limestone and black 

 laminated slate bear a strong resemblance to beds found three miles 

 north-east of Fairfield, in Wayne county, and two and a half miles 

 south of Olney, which I have referred to the horizon of coal No. 13 of 

 the general section. The cross cleavage planes of the limestone shows 

 Stigmaria rootlets, and these were the only indications of organic life 

 ■we could find in it. The rock is fine-grained, of a bluish dove color, the 

 lower portion weathering to a yellowish-buff. The beds in the foregoing- 

 section are succeeded in the hills north and east of the station by sixty 

 to seventy feet of shale and sandstone, with a thin bed of bituminous 

 shale near the top of the exposure. 



At Gray ville, on the west bank of the Wabash river, the bluff rises 

 to a hight of more than a hundred feet above low-water level, and 

 affords a fine section of the Coal Measure beds, as follows : 



Ft. In. 



3ffo. 1. Covered slope of loess and drift 48 



So. 2. Heavy-bedded sandstone 15 



Xo. 3. Slope with partial outcrops of shale 25 



So. 4. Silicions shale 7 to 8 



No. 5. Blue argillaceous shale, with bands of fossiliferous iron ore at the bottom 4 



So. 6. Bituminous shale 6 in. to 8 



If o. 7. Calcareous shale, and shaly bituminous limestone to 3 



No. 8. Black shale 6 in. to 1 



No. 9. Green clay shales, or fire-clay. : :..lto 2 



No. 10. Sandy shales and sandstone in river bed 10 to 12 



This section was taken about 300 yards below the ferry landing, and 

 at the lowest stage of water in the river. The beds here lie in wave- 

 like undulations, the black shale in the above section being at one point 

 15 feet above the river bed, and in a distance of about fifty yards they 

 come down to within about six feet of the river level. In the calcareous 

 shale Xo. 7 of the above section there is a thin band filled with crushed 

 and broken specimens of a small Myalina, probably M. perattenuata. 

 This shale is dark-colored and highly bituminous, and contains ses r eral 

 species of crushed fossils in addition to that above mentioned, but all 



