S66 GEOLOGY OF OHIO. 
samples from near Vinton Station, as exceptionally high in silica, the 
average is only 3.76 per cent. 8 
The Baird ore is sometimes called the “limestone ore,” and has by 
some been regarded as the equivalent of the ore of that name in the 
Hanging Rock District. In no respect do the ores resemble each other 
eyceptin th odlitic structure and this is an exceptional feature in the 
Hanging Rock ore. It must be conceded that we have as yet found no 
ore of this class having any considerable range in the Coal Measures of 
Ohio, or of the Coal Measures of any western State, which possesses so 
high an average quality as the limestone ore of the Hanging Rock Dis- 
trict. It has been smelted for the last fifty years, and the iron made from 
it, whether by chareoal or raw bituminous coal, has always been of a very 
superior character, and has commanded the highest market price. 
The Baird ore, like most of its class,isin relatively thin layer, and 
can not be economically mined by drifting—certainlv not at the present 
prices of iron. This limits the mining to stripping along the outcrop, a 
fact which will of necessity limit the number of furnaces dependent 
upon its use. 
Between the Baird ore and the Nelsonville coal we almost always find 
more or less ore, but in the Hocking coal field this is generally in a 
nodular form. In the region of the Baird Furnace I have seen this ore 
in a thin, continuous layer, but quite sandy in quality. On lower 
Monday Creek, and on Snow Fork, the ore is in flat discs, which contain 
coal plants in a state of beautiful preservation. The same nodular ore 
is seen under the Nelsonville coal, near the mouth of Meeker Run. Dr. 
C. Briggs, one of the members of the Corps of the first Geological Survey 
of the State, called attention to this ore in his Report in 18388. The 
section, already given, taken on the hill back of the Bessie Furnace, 
near Straitsville, shows a gray carbonate of iron, twenty-six feet below 
the Nelsonville coal, and nine feet above the clay containing the equiva- 
lent of the Baird ore. The place of this carbonate is above Coal No. 5. 
In this horizon there is in other parts of the State much ore. It is more 
often nodular, but sometimes passes into heavy masses of black band. 
Two analyses have been made of the nodular ores found eight or ten feet 
below the Nelsonville coal, the first sample from Snow Fork, analyzed 
by Prof. Wormley, and the other from near the mouth of Meeker Run, 
lOy7 Jets A105 ish Jalionaye, 
