GOO. GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
horizon of the Nelsonville, or Straitsville, seam of coal. These find their 
brine in the lower portion of the Waverly sandstone. The Salina and 
Chauncey wells obtain tivir brine in the Upper Waverly. The difficulty 
in south-eastern Ohio is not in finding brine of sufficient strength and in 
sufficient quantity—although sometimes a well may be a failure—the 
leading considerations are cheap fuel and cheap transportation. As 
mines are opened and extensively wrought, the refuse coal not maiket- 
able for ordinary uses will be inore and more employed in making salt, 
and i this way the cost of the fuel will be reduced to a minimum. Such 
is the competition, that few salt-works can now afford to pay much for 
coal. Cheap transportation by river or railroad is so important that no 
salt-works can prosper not located upon one or the other. To some ex- 
tent salt is transported in bulk, and the expense of barrels saved. 
Samples of manfactured salt were obtained from a large number of the 
salt furnaces in the district, which were analyzed by Prof. Wormley. 
Krom a few furnaces the samples did not not reach us. Quite a number 
of specimens of brine were obtained, but before Prof. Wormley, in the 
multiplicity of his labors, could examine them, they were so modified by 
evaporation and by chemical changes produced by air passing through 
the porous jugs and imperfectly sealed corks, that no satisfactory anal- 
yses could be made. Should the work of the Survey be resumed, every 
precaution will be taken to secure for the laboratory the brines in their 
original state. | 
I append Prof. Wormley’s analyses of the salts in a tabulated form. 
Numbers 29, 80, and 31 are of samples of salt from Saginaw, Michigan, 
Onandaga Salt Company, New York, and Kanawha, West Virginia. It 
will be seen from the tables that several samples from the Muskingum 
valley contain over ninety-seven per cent. of chloride of sodium, and at 
the same time the percentage of the undesirable chlorides is small. The 
tables deserve careful study. 
