THE YRON ORES. 399 
in the county vastly exceeds the more conspicuous source which the 
isolated caps of 40 or 50 separate hills, scattered through 100 or more 
square miles of territory, contain. Small supplies can be continued to 
local furnaces for a long while to come. 
ce. Block Ores. 
The block ores of the district can be dismissed with even briefer 
mention. There are three sources of them—the two Mercer limestones 
and the Putnam Hill limestone. A fourth source must be added for a 
few localities in Tuscarawas county, viz., the shales immediately above 
the Lower Kittanning coal (Coal No. 5). In the vicinity of Dover, 
this ore has been taken in considerable amount in connection with the 
coal which it overlies but a single foot. Itis 3 inches thick, is blue 
and close grained, but is well esteemed. Of course, it would not be 
mined by and for itself. It is called the blue block ore. 
The same statements apply to the other block ores. They have 
been taken out in but very small quantity, except as an incidental pro- 
duct in the mining of the limestones for furnace flux. As the lime- 
stones are reached altogether by benching or stripping, nothing but 
weathered ore is ever met, and this fact helps to give the block ores an 
excellent name where they are used. 
No iron ores are mined in Coshocton or Holmes counties, though 
several of the seams already named have a fair development here. If 
a furnace had been established at any convenient point, there is ao 
reason to doubt that the usual and persistent horizons of both block 
and kidney ores would have been found present in more or less of the 
territory. 
BLACKBAND OF HouMmESs County. 
No better place will be found for a brief account of a stratum in- 
cluded in this general district that has provoked a good deal of dis- 
cussion within the last few years. It was first described by the late 
Professor E. B. Andrews in a report of an examination of the then 
projected line of the Cleveland, Canton, Coshocton and Straitsville 
Railway Company, now the Coshocton branch of the Connotton Valley 
Railway. 
