790 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
bored for oil many years since, on Indian Creek, nearly east of the center 
of Canfield, is said to have passed through a workable coal seam, one 
hundred and sixty feet below the surface. It is also reported. that on 
the Kirkpatrick farm, in the northern part of Ellsworth, a boring was 
made through the Blue Limestone and Coal No. 3 one hundred and fifty 
feet to the block coal, there three feet two inches in thickness. Two 
borings have recently been made in the northwestern corner of Beaver 
township, expressly for the Lower Coal, in one of which it was found 
eighteen inches thick, and in the other, some two hundred yards dis- 
tant, it was wanting. Some other holes have been drilled in the south- | 
ern part of the county, but it has not been possible to obtain any reliable 
information in regard tothem. Considering the numberof unsuccessful 
efforts made to find the coal in the townships where the most important 
basins are now known to exist, it cannot be Said that any considerable 
portion of the southern half of the county has been tested for the Lower 
Coal ; indeed, for anything yet known to the contrary, there may be as 
many and as valuable coal basins in the southern as in the northern 
portion of the county. 3 
BLACKBAND IRON ORE. 
Over a considerable area in the southern part of Weathersfield, in 
Trumbull county, and ‘the north-western part of Austintown, in 
Mahoning—the Mineral Ridge belt—Coal No. 1 is accompanied with a 
stratum of blackband iron ore of good quality, which has been worked 
for many years, and has proved an important element in the economic 
resources of the Mahoning Valley. This iron ore is the upper part of a 
stratum of bituminousshale, highly charged with iron, and is clearly the 
carbonaceous mud that was deposited in a lake or body of open water 
which occupied a considerable portion of the area of one of the most im- 
portant coal basins of this region. Usually the iron ore forms a contin- 
uous sheet from six to ten inches in thickness, capping a band of black 
shale two feet thick, both of which divide the coal seam into two benches. 
The lower bench, usually from one to two feet thick, is typical block 
coal of excellent quality ; the upper bench, from two and a half to three 
feet. thick, is considerably unlike most of the Mahoning Valley coal, 
breaking with more irregular fracture, having a pitchy luster and con- 
taining considerable more bitumen. These differences led to the im- 
pression that the Mineral Ridge coal was a different seam from that 
mined in the Mahoning Valley; and it was for a long time known as the 
“Blackband coal.” Abundant evidence has, however, been gained that 
they are essentially the same, though it is quite possible that the lower 
