738 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
the railroad at Linton. It is from two to two and a half feet in thick- 
ness, furnishing an excellent coal, like that at Hammondsville. The 
“Creek Vein” (Coal No. 3) lies about twenty feet below the grade of the 
railroad. It has been opened near the hotel at the east end of the bridge 
which crosses Yellow Creek. It is, at the outcrop, about three and a half 
feet in thickness. It is of fairly good quality, but contains, as usual, 
much sulphur. It was mined here for many years by the salt boilers. 
The old entry is now closed, but the coal is said to have run out in the 
hills—whether from a “horseback” or a slip can not now be determined— 
and hence it was known as the “Lost Vein.” | 
It is reported that a coal seam from four to six feet in thickness was 
once opened a few feet above No. 3, but it proved to be only local. It | 
was very soft, and seems rather to have been an accumulation of coaly 
matter torn up from its original position and washed into some depression 
by the water from which the associated shales and sandstones were de- 
posited. The “Creek Vein,” as mentioned ahove, was “cut out” in the 
mine opened in this locality, and it is quite possible that the local deposit 
referred to above was formed from its debris. 
A good example of the manner in which shales and coals were eroded 
before the deposition of sandstones which rest on them, may be seen 
alongside the railroad track between the Diamond Mine and the station. 
Here the black shale over Coal No. 4 has been very irregularly furrowed 
by currents which brought in and deposited sand upon it. The shale 
having been here removed in building the raiiroad, shows the wavy and 
irregular under-surface of the sandstone very distinctly. To fully com- 
prehend such exhibitions it is necessary to realize that sandstones are 
. always deposits from water in rapid motion, while shales are the product 
of deposition in quiet water, and coal was formed at the surface as peat 
accumulates at the present day. Hence where we find coal covered with 
fine laminated shale, once a clay, we know that a peat bog was quietly 
submerged and covered with more or less turbid water, from which the 
clay was thrown down as a sediment. Where sandstones and conglom- 
erates irregularly replace shales over coal, we know that the quiet of the 
first period of submergence was followed by a stormy one, where waves 
and currents swept over what had been the bottom of still water, carry- 
ing away more or less of the soft material, and bringing in sand and 
gravel to take its place. 
On the south side of Yellow Creek, at its mouth, the exposures of the 
rocks are very imperfect. In the hill below the post-office a coal seam 
occurs fifty feet above the railroad. It is reported to be thirty inches 
thick, and is probably Coal No.5. The place of Coals Nos. 3 and 4 should 
