28 GEOLOGY OF LA SALLE COUNTY. 



ference of beds of coal or other material, and in this 

 case we have the Craddock limestone, the Newton 

 sandstone, the Streator sandstone, the upper black 

 shale and the lower black shale, all of them extendino- 

 throtig-hout the basin, in patches, at least, and always 

 in the s^me order for our g-uides, and the}^ lead us to 

 but one conclusion, and that is that no one ever saw 

 coal No. 4 in the Vermillion region, or ever will. Had 

 Prof. Wort hen spent two or three days on the Vermil- 

 lion unencumbered by a theory or g-eneral section to 

 which, like travelers to the bed of Procrustes, the poor 

 facts must accommodate themselves, and studied the 

 rocks as they lie there and let them tell their own story 

 by tracing- out the relations of the various coal seams 

 to the sandstones afnd of the black shale beds to the 

 coal seams, he mig-ht have learned that they always 

 occupy the same positions with reg'ard to each other, 

 and are certain g'uides to the sequence of the strata, 

 and he would have found neither No. 4 nor No. 5 coals 

 in this reg'ion. We conclude, then, that the coals at 

 La Salle are Nos. 2, 7 and 8, that coal No. 3 is a thin, 

 double bed at Streator, but becomes a black shale north 

 of Kirkpatrick's, and is the lower black slate in Prof. 

 W.'s section's section, that No. 4 is coal at Streator, 

 but black slate farther north, that No. 5 is a black 

 slate, that No. 6 is not found, that No. 7 is the Streator, 

 Kirkpatrick and Middle La Salle bed, alwa3^s hav- 

 ing- a thick san Istone or thick beds of sand}^ shales a 

 few feet below it, another harder and divided into rect- 

 ang-ular blocks some feet above it, and a few feet above 

 this a hard, nodular limestone — the Craddock of Dr. 

 Evans, a little above which we find coal No. 8, the 

 upper Deer Park and La Salle bed, that No. 9 lies a 

 little below the La Salle limestone, and No. 10 above 

 it. We also conckide that the lower and the upper 



