The Ohio Naturalist. 
[Vol.X, No. 5, 
1 28 
feet below the Lower Mercer limestone and 64 feet above the 
level of the Sharon coal at the base of the shaft. Its position 
seems to be about the horizon of the Quarkertown coal, but the 
only suggestion of an associated coal is a considerable thickness 
of black shale overlying it, which is quite fissile, fairly tough and 
lifting in broad sheets particularly the first few feet above the 
limestone. About one foot of the shale above the limestone is 
somewhat calcareous responding readily to acid, and suggests 
that at no great distance it may become limestone. This black 
shale is in harmony with the gray and black shale with the two 
thin seams of coal found above the limestone in the Yellow 
Creek gorge. 
Being covered the character of the strata immediately 
beneath the limestone was not seen. A little below, however, 
massive layers of sandstone appear which are certainly the 
upper part of the Lower Massillon sandstone, or Lower Con- 
noquenessing of Pennsylvania. The limestone is black, very 
hard, tough, and apparently in one layer. It is 2 feet or more 
in thickness — the full thickness not being obtained due to a 
sharp dip down stream concealing its base. It is very fossilifer- 
ous, the white shells and crinoid stems presenting a striking 
appearance in the black matrix. A few species of brachiopods 
and fragments of crinoid stems predominate. The latter are 
often 6 or 8 inches long, as they also are in the Vanport in the 
quarry above, and lying horizontally with the section markings 
showing plainly they somewhat resemble worms, and the unini- 
tiated point them out and confidently inform one that they are 
petrified worms. 
Newberry in his report on Mahoning County, and in a section 
on Grindstone Run indicates the presence at this horizon of a 
“Dark silicious limestone’’ 1 foot in thickness. [Ohio Geol. Sur. 
Vol. Ill, opp. p. 804.] He nowhere else describes or mentions it 
so far as the writer is aware. 
It will be recalled that a black limestone outcrops in the 
Yellow Creek gorge at 884 feet above sea. This outcrop is about 
24 miles west of Furnace Run, and while it lies 28 feet lower than 
the outcrop on the latter run it is certainly the same stratum. 
In a test well on the C. T. Geiger farm located near the 
Youngstown-Boardman pike and about 1 mile north of Board- 
man Center and 3f miles due west of the Yellow Creek outcrop, 
a 3 foot black limestone was reached at 910 feet above sea. It 
lies 1 1 1 feet below the Lower Mercer limestone and 47 feet above 
the Sharon coal which is 2 feet thick in this well and lies at 863 
feet above sea. 
It will be recalled that in the Alliance section an unknown 
limestone of 5 feet thickness was struck at 882 above sea and at 
