204 GEOLOGY OF ILLINOIS. 



Ft. 



Flag-sandstone 10 



Gray and blue shale, ■with ironstone 40 



Coal, mostly rash 2? 



Covered 30 



High water of the Ohio river ? 



204 



Tbe buff-colored massive sandstone, near the top of this section, forms 

 a vertical wall in many places along the ridge; and, from this point, 

 gradually descends to the east ; so that where last seen in that direc- 

 tion, about a quarter of a mile distant, it is found to be only sixty feet 

 above high water ; a rate of dip that would carry it to the water's edge 

 in front of Shawneetown. 



In Hardin county, below the mouth of the Saline river, and opposite 

 the town of Caseyville, in Kentucky, the Conglomerate rises into aver- 

 tical wall known as the "Battery -rock," aud forms here the western bank 

 of the Ohio river. It is divided into two beds, by a very thin parting 

 of shale and coal. The latter is very irregularly bedded and is not any- 

 where more than a few inches in thickness ; and, though not considered 

 persistent, it is seen at the mouth of Trade water river, on the opposite 

 side of the Ohio. My measurement of that portion of this rock seen 

 above low water, taken with an Aneroid barometer, made the lower bed 

 fifty and the upper sixty feet thick; and the space between low water 

 and the coal, which is here referred to No. 1, one hundred and eighty 

 feet. 



The " Battery-rock coal," as it is called, is the equivalent of the seam 

 worked by Bell, Cook and Casey, on Tradewater river, in Kentucky; 

 and also the equivalent of the Ice-house seam, or No. 3 of Owen's sec- 

 tion ; and likewise it is believed to be synchronous with the Cannelton 

 seam, in Indiana, and the Hawesville seam in Kentucky, on the eastern 

 margin of the basin. 



On Tradewater river this coal ranges from two and a half to five feet 

 in thickness; but back of Caseyville, and on Shotwell's property, in 

 Union county, Kentucky, it averages only from eighteen to twenty-two 

 inches. At Battery-rock also it is a thin seam, rarely reaching twenty- 

 two inches. At every locality where this coal was seen it has from one 

 to four inches of coal-rash at the bottom, above which the coal is highly 

 bituminous, and is held in excellent repute by steamboat men on the 

 Ohio river. 



Battery-rock coal has been opened in three or four places along the 

 river front, but it is too thin and too subject to horse-backs to admit of 

 extensive mining operations. The gray-colored roof shales contain a 

 few fossil plants belonging to the genera Lepidodendron and Stigmaria, 

 Pecopteris lonchitica and Neuropteris hirsuta, but they are too friable to 

 be preserved. No fossil shells were found, though Lingula umbonata is 



