408         CONTRIBUTIONS   TO    ECONOMIC    GEOLOGY,    i901,    PART   II. 
So  far  as  known  all  the  drifts  are  on  one  coal  bed,  but  the  602-foot 
diamond-drill  hole  bored  in  the  creek  bed  opposite  the  mouth  of  one 
of  these  drifts  and  starting  perhaps  25  or  30  feet  below  its  level  is 
reported  to  have  passed  through  six  beds  of  coal.  The  thicknesses 
of  the  upper  two,  whose  positions  are  not  given  in  the  section,  are 
reported  at  8  feet  4  inches  and  7  feet  6  inches;  the  other  four  are  very 
much  thinner.  No  accurate  idea  could  be  gained  of  the  quality  of 
the  coals  passed  through  by  the  drill.  No  effort  has  been  made  thus 
far  to  sink  shafts  to  these  beds,  so  that  it  may  be  assumed  that  their 
quality  was  not  sufficiently  good  to  justify  this  expenditure. 
The  owners  of  the  prospects  report  that  selected  samples  of  the  coal 
have  yielded  from  51  to  71  per  cent  of  fixed  carbon  by  analysis;  that 
the  average  moisture  content  is  about  8  per  cent,  and  that  samples 
yielding  as  low  as  5  per  cent  of  ash  have  been  analyzed.  It  is  stated 
that  a  fair  sample  across  the  face  of  one  of  the  drifts  has  yielded  about 
26  per  cent  of  commercial  coal,  and  that  in  other  places  the  coal 
forms  from  12  to  40  per  cent  of  the  total  thickness  of  the  bed. 
It  will  be  evident  from  the  above  account  that  the  coals  thus  far 
revealed  by  developments  are  not  usable  in  the  ordinary  commercial 
way  because  of  their  very  high  percentage  of  ash,  due  to  the  intimate 
intermingling  of  coal  and  bone.  It  is  possible,  however,  that  as  they 
occur  in  a  region  remote  from  other  sources  of  hydrocarbon  fuels,  they 
may  prove  to  be  suitable  for  use  in  producer-gas  engines,  when  this 
means  of  developing  power  has  become  more  general. 
