342 F". REPORT OF PROGRESS. B. W. CLAYPOLE. 



acting on this belief much labor has been spent in two 

 places in the valley in fruitless effort to find it. One of 

 these places is near the school-house and the other about a 

 mile ii]) the valley near the water-shed. In the latter of 

 these a six-foot tunnel was driven 30 or 40 feet into the hill- 

 side before the faith and patience of the diggers failed. A 

 little knowledge of geology would have prevented the ex- 

 penditure of so much useless labor. The whole thickness 

 of the Marcellus black shale is exposed between the school- 

 house and the saw-mill, and if any workable bed of coal ex- 

 isted in it its edge must have been shown somewhere on 

 this space. No coal seam of even moderate thickness could 

 escape notice on so large an outcrop. And there is nothing 

 in the black shale of the hills that does not exist in the 

 black shale of the valley. 



I was informed by Mr. Smith, who has bored numerous 

 holes to slight depths in the country round Little Germany, 

 that he once found what he considered a bed of coal about 

 three inches thick. Such seams are known in the Marcellus 

 in several places in the county, but it need hardly be said 

 that they are totally worthless. 



Another good display of nearly the whole thickness of 

 the black shale occurs close to the residence of the Messrs. 

 Rice, and the exposure of the Marcellus limestone just de- 

 scribed. It shows about 80 feet, which is about its full 

 amount here, though some part is doubtless concealed under 

 the road. One note-worthy feature at this point is the 

 gradual transition from one bed to another. The black 

 shales of the base, rusting to an ochreous color, slowly lose 

 their rnst, ami higher still the black fades into a lighter 

 shade and then into a pink, which merges so gradually into 

 the gray of the Hamilton Lower shale that to draw a divid- 

 ing plane is impossible. There is no break, but slowly 

 changing conditions of deposit are plainly indicated. 



The Marcellus black shale has also been tin-own out of 

 the ore works at Oak Grove and at Adam's Glen, but no 

 further aotlce is required of these outcrops. 



