674 GEOLOGY OF OHIO 
Great Vein. There, near the top, a coal is mined which is, locally, four 
and one-half feet thick. It is a soft, melting, bituminous coal, of very 
fine quality. Mr. Nichols’s section makes this coal 230 feet above the 
Great Vein. 
IRON ORES. 
The outcrops of iron ores, apparently of good quality, are abundant. 
on the slopes of most of the hills, but few of them have been systemati- 
cally explored. Hnough has been done, however, to demonstrate their 
presence in considerable quantities, and of excellent quality. 
The lower ore, about 140 feet below the Great Vein, is below the sur- 
face ; but, at the north-west of Lexington, it has been extensively mined, 
and shipped to the Zanesville furnaces. It is a fossiliferous ore, associ- 
ated with the limestone, and contuins characteristic limestone fossils. It 
is not accessible in the immediate vicinity of any of the openings in the 
Great Vein, but all the ore on this horizon can be made accessible by 
transporting it a short distance. 
About ten feet below the lower Lexington coal, is the out-crop of the 
Baird ore, ten inches thick. A stratum of sandstone separates it from 
the coal above. Search should be made throughout this part of the field 
for this very important ore, the true place of which is directly under the 
fire-clay of this coal. 
Immediately below the Great Vein are frequent outcrops of a compact, 
very hard, blue carbonate, which appears of good quality, the nodules, 
sometimes, being of large size, and found at varying distances from the 
coal. I know of no explorations on this horizon about here, but in other 
parts of the field, from fifteen to twenty feet of these shales contain ores 
of good quality, and of workable thickness, found at varying distances 
below the coal. This horizon is accessible in most of the territory north 
of Moxahala village, and the indications of the presence of the ore are 
in all respects favorable. | 
A similar ore is also found in the shales, directly above the Great Vein, 
sometimes scattered in nodules and thin bands through an interval of 
eighteen feet ; but this horizon has likewise been little exposed, although 
one exposure of good ore, one foot in thickness, was observed. 
About forty feet above the Great Vein, at Moxahala Station, a remark- 
ably fine ore has been opened, called there the Norris Coal ore, because it 
was believed to be near the horizon of that coal I would suggest for it 
the name of the Moxahala ore. It is in large, massive nodules, the seven 
feet of shales exposed disclosing the equivalent of from four to five feet 
of solid ore, in part a brown oxide, and in part a blue carbonate. Both 
