558 WESTERN COAL MEASURES AND INDIANA COAL. 
inferior quality, and largely contaminated with pyrites, which is 
so generally disseminated through the seam that it is impracti- 
cable, in mining, to entirely separate it from the coal. In many 
of the counties, however, within this zone, the caking coals will 
compare very favorably with the caking coals of the Pittsburgh, 
Pa., district. 
From her geographical position, and more especially on account 
of the extent and value of her coal beds, and the peculiar adapta- 
tion of this coal to the metallurgy of iron and steel which now 
forms one of the leading industries of the world, we can safely 
predict for Indiana a bright future as a manufacturing state. The 
commerce of the new far west, which is increasing with a rapidity 
unprecedented in the growth of empires, will just as naturally 
look to Indiana for its supply of iron and steel, with which to 
keep up the system of railroads traversing the great plains to the 
Pacific Ocean, as the old west formerly looked to Pennsylvania. 
In Indiana we find the last great belt of timber, suitable for man- 
ufacturing purposes, and after crossing her borders, thence to the 
Pacific ocean, no coal has yet been found that can successfully be 
used in the manufacture of iron. 
Professor A. H. WorrHen remarked, we have found the same difficulty 
in Minois in reconciling our section of the Coal measures strata with 
those of Kentucky, that has been alluded to by Professor Cox, in the 
aminations I became satisfied that the Kentucky section was erroneous, 
and that by giving distinct names to different outcrops of the same sand- 
stone, in its outcrops at different localities, they had duplicated the num- 
ber of their workable coals, and also the thickness of the coal strata. 
the Geological Survey of rein published in 1866, where, by placing 
these two sandstones on the s me geological level, it was found that the 
strata ee them anes sections, as nearly identical as they could 
anywhere in the coal series, at points twenty miles asunder. By 
arns their section in this way, we find there a general correspondence 
between the strata in Illinois and Kentucky, as nearly complete, perhaps, 
as could be expected in opposite portions of the same coal-field. e 
coal-seams of Western and Northern Illinois are usually continuous over 
large areas, as much so indeed as the limestones, shales, and sandstones, 
with which they are associated. 
Professor SWALLOW remarked that he had greatly enjoyed the examina- 
Aige ea a ee 
ea a S oe 
ERSA LE PE P S om re, TASNA CEST ee A G EET 
Fois 
