The Pittsburg Coal Bed. — White. 59 
the southern portion of the state, with the University stu- 
dents of geology, the mayor of Huntington requested me to 
determine, if possible, to what horizon the coal belonged. 
It proved an easy problem to identify it since the Crinoidal 
limestone, with its characteristic fossils, was easily found in 
the bed of Four Pole creek, fifty feet above the Ohio, and 
above it the ordinary rock succession of the Barren or Elk 
river series. But, being anxious to know what the miner 
who was digging the coal thought of the matter, he was in- 
terrogated, and replied as follows: "I don't know anything 
about geology, but I dug coal several years in the Pittsburg 
seam, along the Monongahela, and this coal reminds me of 
the Pittsburg in the way it breaks into blocks." Thus had 
the miner correctly diagnosed the horizon of the bed by his 
own peculiar methods, though 300 miles' distant from where 
he had learned its structure, with only the tools of his trade 
and his bright observing mind as his guidance, strong testi- 
mony certainly to the persistence of even the internal struc- 
ture of the bed. 
The oil-well driller is recjuired to identify • this coal cor- 
rectly in the great petroleum districts of West Virginia and 
Pennsylvania, between the Ohio and the Monongahela rivers, 
where it is buried from sight by the Permian beds all the 
way from 500 to 1,500 feet. It is there a key-rock for deter- 
mining the amount of casing and the depth of the oil sands, 
and thus many dollars of expense depend upon the correct- 
ness of the driller's identification. This he does by observ- 
ing the character of the drillings as brought to the surface 
by the sand pump, or in other words he observes the strati- 
graphic succession in his own peculiar way, and in the hun- 
dreds and even thousand of holes drilled in this area, he has 
only two or three mistakes charged against his accuracy of 
discrimination. 
A word of friendly criticism and kindly warning concern- 
ing the methods of 'the United States Geological Survey, 
especially in its Coal Measures work, but equally applicable 
to the other formations, becomes in this connection an im- 
perative duty. 
In recent years a theory seems to have been adopted by 
the United States geologists who have been studying the 
