322 Carboniferous Formation of Pennsylvania — Wasmuth. 
necessitating the employment of. industrious surveyors and 
miners from abroad. The mining engineers of to-day as 
specialists, did not exist then, but many surveyors and miners 
became lessees of coal lands or took charge of operations, and 
in general they controlled all mining affairs. 
At that time the science of structural geology and mining 
had not advanced to its present attitude in Europe; thus the 
new comers applied the theories of mining, etc., with which 
they were familiar, until financial and economical conditions 
necessitated the formation of gigantic mining corporations, 
which of course were obliged to put their interests in charge of 
those, liberated by the absorption of individual operators. It 
is natural that those commanding superintendents, etc., 
impressed their subordinates with their own theories, brought 
from abroad and improved by experience — they were the 
instructors of the present generation of mine officers, so to 
speak; and thus we find the science of structural geology of the 
anthracite region at the status of 50 years ago and still advo- 
cated by the mining engineers and geologists of this state. 
The results of such a state of affairs can be traced yet from the 
location of old mines and the business records of operators. It 
was natural therefore, that mining experts and geologists con- 
sidered the southern field to be a deep synclinal with several 
rolls but without dislocation of the strata, and in their estimates 
they figured fabulous amounts of coal to be mined from this 
basin. A close investigation of railroad cuts, cross-cuts and 
tunnels in mines in the neighborhood of the synclinal axis 
will convince anyone that the flexures are enormously distorted, 
crushed and dislocated and that the estimates of available coal 
are vastly exaggerated. 
The coal of the flexures in Sharp mountain, to a great ex- 
tent, is destro3^ed and cannot be mined at present market prices. 
The coal seams of the northern flexure of the synclinal, es- 
pecially the Mammoth bed, have been mined extensively to- 
ward the synclinal, whereby numerous dislocations of the coal 
beds have been met with (mentioned already) and a number of 
collieries have been abandoned temporarily, partly on account 
of the condition of the coal beds, and partly, because the pres- 
ent market price does not warrant a successful operation by 
inadequate improvements, (slopes, etc.) 
