CHAPTER LXXXVIIE. 
SUPPLEMENTAL REPORT ON PERRY COUNTY, AND PORTIONS 
OF HOCKING AND ATHENS COUNTIES. 
The Ohio Geological Survey was inaugurated in June, 1869. A con- 
siderable pait of the working season of that year was spent by me and 
my assistants in determining the general outlines of the different geo- 
logical formations in the Second, or South-eastern, district, and in pre- 
paring my portion of the geological map published in the Report for 
1869. That work done, the remainder of the season was devoted to the 
Hocking Valley, and the region east of it in portions of Perry, Hocking, 
and Athens counties. The dominant geological feature of the region 
was the Nelsonville seam of coal, which was traced through many town- 
ships, and its varying fortunes of thickness and quality carefully noted. 
Many analyses of the coal from various locations were made by Professor 
Wormley, and the value of the coal of this great seam so fully authenti- 
cated that, in a short time, capital was attracted to the region, and rail- 
roads were constructed to carry the products of a stimulated mining 
industry to various markets. Cautiously, Professor Wormley and myself 
felt our way to the conclusion expressed in the first Report, that the coal 
of this seam, from certain localities investigated, was adapted, in the 
raw or uncoked state, to the manufacture of iron in the blast furnace. 
This conclusion has since been abundantly verified, and to-day furnaces 
are in successful operation in locations among the hills which, in 1869, 
would have been considered very remote, if not entirely inaccessible. 
The coal has also been found to be well adapted to many other important 
uses, which, if less exacting as to purity of fuel, are none the less 
important. 
Besides the investigations of coal, such other leading geological feattires 
of the region as the limited season of labor in 1869 left it possible to 
gather up, wete presented in the Report. The next year our steps were 
necessarily directed elsewhere, for it was expected that the survey of the 
whole State would be completed in three years, and the law so required. 
