MAHONING COUNTY. 7187 
drainage lines, though these may have been partly filled up, and their 
connections obliterated before the peat was formed that subsequently 
became coal. The connecting links may also have been in places 
removed by the erosion to which the surface was subjected, subsequen 
to the formation of the coal bed, and when the overlying sandstone was 
deposited. The future working of the mines in the Mahoning Valley, 
will doubtless throw much light upon this subject. Maps have been 
procured of most of the basins which have been worked, and these with 
such others as may be hereafter obtained, will be laid down on the gen- 
eral map of the Mahoning Valley coal field which is to accompany a 
report that will form part of the volume on Economic Geology. 
The peculiar valley-like character of some of the basins is well illus- 
trated by thatin which the Foster and Kyle shafts are located in the 
southern part of Youngstown. This has all the characters of some of the 
peat-filled valleys which may be seen in the northern counties of Ohio 
at the present time; and in this basin the drainage would seem to have 
been westward, as the coal lies lower, and in a broader trough at the 
shaft of the Foster Coal Co. than at the Kyle shaft. 
It is hardly necessary to say that the old valleys, if such they are, 
which now hold the coal, have no relation to the present surface, since 
_ they were buried under many hundred feet of strata of various kinds, and 
the present surface is altogether the result of modern erosion.. Hence, 
the only methods of explorations of untested territory are by boring, and 
by following the “swamps” wherever they may lead in the basins that 
are worked. It is also true that no surface indications have any yalue as 
euides, for the discovery of unknown basins below, and from the narrow- 
ness of many of the coal deposits no territory can be regarded as fairly 
tested untilit has been pierced with numerous holes. This gives en- 
couragement to hope that in the large area within the country which 
may hold Coal No. 1, many valuable coal basins will yet be found; and 
the experience of the past, as well as the general knowledge we have of 
the circumstances which have affected the distribution of the coal, point 
to the inference that new basins will, from time to time, be discovered 
through many years; and that the exhaustion of the coal deposits of the 
Mahoning Valley, which has been so often predicted, is not likely to 
occur at any near period. 
The question of the extension southward of the series of coal basins 
which underlie the northern townships of the county, is one of great 
practical importance, and one in regard to which there is considerable 
diversity of opinion. It is held by some who have given considerable 
attention to the subject that all the important deposits of Coal No. 1 
