COAL MINES OF MUSKINGUM COUNTY. 883 
due and seems unusually uniform and regular in its character. It does | 
not vary much from a thickness of 4 feet in any of the numerous openings 
that have been made in the seam for local coal banks. At the Duvall 
banks, in Section 36, Newton, there are 4 ft. 4 inches of coal, overlain 
by 6 inches of cannel. Its quality also seems in all respects satisfactory. 
It is a bright, fairly clean coal, well jointed, cutting easily, and mining 
to good advantage. It is much freer from seams of shale and clay than 
this seam usually is. The regular black slate above the seam becomes 
locally a cannel coal, but of no great value. The coal is shown on the 
east side of the Brush Creek Valley in every farm for 2 or 24 miles, 
through Sections 7, 5 and 27. It dips down under the heavy ridge that 
separates Brush Creek from the Muskingum River in Brush Creek and 
Harrison townships. Crossing this ridge to the eastward and descend- 
ing toward the river valley by one of the branches of Blue Rock Run, 
the moment that we come to the level at which the coal could appear, 
we find the farmers mining it by stripping from the creek bottoms, the 
-coal still holding a thickness of 4 feet. From this point on to the 
famous Blue Rock mines of the Muskingum Valley, which have been 
already described, the coal appears almost continuously, being every- 
where counted a 4-foot seam. Where the change begins to occur, by 
which the present remarkable character of the Blue Rock coal is 
acquired, there are no present opportunities for learning, but the in- 
ference is a legitimate one that the Brush Creek coal extends under the 
divide until it unites with the Blue Rock field. In other words, these 
‘two fields belong to one and the same basin. If the proper exploration 
shall confirm this view, it is clear that we have here one of the largest 
and most promising of the Upper Freeport coal fields of the State, 
comparable in value with Salineville, Dell Roy and Cambridge. While 
the seam does not show as great thickness here as in the other chief 
centers of production, it seems steadier than elsewhere, and if this fact 
is established, it will more than compensate for the smaller measure- 
ment. It must not, however, be forgotten, that the seam has everywhere 
-else, and even in this field, to some extent, suffered from the erosion due 
to the transportation of its sandstone roof, and much more irregularity 
than has yet been developed ought not therefore to surprise us, if it 
shall be hereafter disclosed. | 
The wide limits, provisionally assigned to the field, may also be 
proved incorrect by the application of suitable tests to that part of the 
