é 
106 : GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
More difficulty has been experienced in harmonizing the observations 
of different localities in this than in other parts of the field, and the at- 
tempt to make a general section, of necessity, results in one that is only 
approximately correct for any special locality. In places many of the 
minerals designated will be wanting, and the associated rock strata will 
vary both in thickness and character. 
Of the coals below the Great Vein, of which indications of four have 
been observed, no one is known to be of workable ‘thickness. That di- 
rectly below the “‘ Drift ore,” at Haydenville, was cut by the tunnel on 
the coal railroad, and showed twenty-two inches of coal. Coal No. 6a, 
according to levels made by Mr. Hayden’s engineer, is here thirty-six feet 
above the Great Vein,* and shows from twelve to thirty inches of shaly 
coal. On George W. Gill’s land, on Meeker’s Run, south of Nelsonville, 
it is twenty-eight feet above the Great Vein, is three and one-half feet 
thick, and, so far as opened, appears to be of good quality. 
The Bayley’s Run coal is here seventy-five to eighty feet above the 
Great Vein, four to five feet thick, a hard, bright, compact, melting coal, 
showing little sulphur, and gives promise of furnishing a good coke. 
It is mined some five miles south and south-west of the mouth of 
Meeker’s Run, and is reported as reaching a thickness of six feet. There 
is evidently a large area in this neighborhood, where it is undeveloped ; 
and if, as its appearance indicates, it is sufficiently free from sulphur to 
make a good coke, its value can be hardly overestimated, supplementing 
as it does the other iron-making products, and there being no other mate- 
rial wanting for the cheap production of good iron. On the Cawthorne 
property, on Snow Fork, Ward township, this coal is reported to be three . 
feet thick, and No. 6a is exposed from twenty-five to thirty feet above the 
Great Vein, where it is four feet thick. In the hills between Nelsonville 
and Straitsville, the outcrops of both of these coals may be seen, but no 
openings into them have been made. Search should be made for these 
“upper coals on all the hills which reach their horizon; and wherever 
they are of workable thickness, they should be mined before or simulta- 
neously with the mining of the Great Vein. It should be esteemed a 
crime to destroy the value of these upper coals by the too hasty mining 
of that below; and it is to be hoped that so much better results will be 
obtained in iron-making, by mingling the fuel obtained from the differ- 
ent horizons, that there will be no temptation to commit this error. 
* This interval is doubtless correctly given, and the coal which Mr. Roy traces to this 
point as an offshoot of the Great Vein, should not be confounded with it. The latter is 
No. 6a, and its horizon can be traced throughout nearly all this territory. 
