Q A. <20T?) Key PRY HARDY-WILLIAMS [LIBRARY OF THE GHOLOGIOCAL HISTORY OF ORGANISMS FOUNDED BY CHARLES ELIAS HARDY (sony 27, 170e-—-s0Lx 7, 1808) CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924080863925 PLATE fry 2° \ 5. lor. del Lig. TL Astavainus! erenarias supers supa, Lig. 10 do. te. wpiiior surfer, Fig. 2. tena figure traplioerinus LE traciults. Lig. 2° prrigile view, Lig s Beisel ew (Aa ste: PEATE Ll Lig. 1 Basal view Fentrenites Chess. Lig J? tron view de. Fey 2? Profile view do. Fig. 1” Fragment de. showing imterradial proves, Fig. L0 true bawal pleoves. Nat sted By Lo Geneve figure veduccd prom 2 vbesus ene fudt dtaneer PLATE II! Fig If Figd9 Ftg J? Fig l Fig l* vongem ded , TM Baler 7 Fig LAsteracrias cupitals Frit L® edge rune of sumniut lahes Luz 1? sude ruew vt do. Fig I tronn Brg 1” Basal www Fig Lo Generve figure Buy I! view of Base anal side, Fig 1! Basal pieces vutsute Fig 2? Basal preces inside Fig L’ Ln viens Fasal preces opposite anal side Fry. LE End vuur of Basul DlCCOS PR Ee $§ Lyon dl = if tater Se Fig. 1 Actinocrinus ahbnormis, Fig 1° Basal vuw Fig 1? Genere stigue Fig 2 Dota cocrinus Grnete Figure Fra 2% veenm of crown Bry 2" protile vin Frag 2! Basal view. Fig 3 Vasocrinus Geneve figure Bra 3° rasocriuas valens Erg 3” vsinlplus ditterent Specimen basal viene Frag 2 “2 Seulplus protile ren Fig 3% pew of coown Fiy 3 Basal view § SiymJa. : : TMBudes Mivanates Veaneutta Lig. LL dra site fiont, Fg L® vppustte sule pront, Fig J? timearte figure, Lig. 10 view of superim sufie opr cron, Fy L ¢ Basal view, Lid: 2 Oivanites Anynhiur, Lig 2° dial wide prout, Fy, 2% Cronn view tintaster, Fry. 2 va SL tenaw yure, Fg. 8 trown view enlarged 2. diunucters, Fig. #e projile PLATE VI iD : d 4 oy pees ms AG) a ; aes wae ES oe ‘ : ri Ae, if aoaas . # i # ae ae ae Pe ibe Lp See (=a" ee ra ar, Witeoe ES. i / f ’ es ! eee ee i nog ae i fof ¢ ty f we [Oe ane Fig. 4 e a ve . eth OO Leo Lesques. a7 lel JAM Butley je 2 L MSphenopterts tirdactntites Prong !/. 9 Peopteats lonehitiud Brong! 2 Nearopteris fleriuosa Mer? LZ lewroplars husala Zsy" PLATE VII IS ny int A\(: Way Ve 4 \ \ 3 4 \ ; ans sf i sea (cons) aca RNR Ind y: fe e he? Teo Lesquereux Del. L Letndodendran potitum Spr. Jari ohovata Lsg* JB Bullet Se, nov F heudostrotiis 4. Siqtl- 3 Lepiutostrohus hreviyolius Ley 0. Lendopl in brevijotium Lsq* 2 Stqnuearna froades Sweonl Z hefudaplvilum lancealatum Brug! &. tapolilhes platiuarnimatis tsg* I. Carpolithes buustudatus Stan! 10. tulanites tnberculosus tare VVAL WOMNOY INE Peten DP providence, Loanenat 2 regulars, eunilaa 3 parva, 3 natural were, Pleaarvotoanaria A honturborensis. 40 natural sixe BIOL deprescadrea & carbonara tevvillia 0 Jongispina , Phiatila 7 striato-loxtata , Myalina & pernagerims, Cardinia ? 9 fragils, Macrocheilus UW yractls, L natural ste COAL MEASURES Goniatites 1 nolinensis 1% dorsal outline of septa, 1? venteal oulline of septa, Nautilus 2 ferratus reduced 4,2 section of same nak sixe N3avanaliculatus nat. sixe.3“scotion of same smallen mdnudud Lingala évimbonat enlarged, #* natural sire. COAL MEASURES Orthas J. resupmnordes 1° entering valve Ll? profile Avicula 2.rectalaterarca 13.acosta Nautilus 1. decovalus 1° fiont view L. ” outline of septa Soleninya J soleaiformeis Lroductus 6 muuriwalas TUE PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF S. 8. LYON, E. T. COX, AND LEO. LESQUEREUX, AS PREPARED FOR THE GEOLOGICAL REPORT OF KENTUCKY, AND PUBLISHED IN VOL. 3. FRANKFORT, KENTUCKY. A. G. HODGES, PUBLIC PRINTER. 1857, CHAPTER I. PALAONTOLOGY. DESCRIPTION OF NEW SPECIES OF ORGANIC REMAINS. _ During the progress of the Geological Survey of the State, many new and interesting fossil forms have been discovered, which, with those previously in the possession of the members of the geological corps, of new and undescribed genera and species would, were they all described and figured, make an extensive and valuable addition to the science of Paleontology. A few only of those most characteristic or remarkable, for the present publication, have been selected. They form but a small part of those deemed worthy of being carefully studied and described. The. sub-carboniferous limestone, the Coal Measures, and the tran- sition beds of intercalated limestone near the base of the millstone grit, of western Kentucky, abounds in fossils of remarkable and beau- tiful forms. The living inhabitants and the dead individuals of those ancient seas, both contributed, with the wasted materials of the subja- cent lands, to the formation of the sedimentary strata then in process of deposition which now serve as a guide to the student of Stratigraph- ical Geology, pointing out with certainty the period and geological po- sition of rocky beds wherever found, and with great certainty indicat- ing equivalent geological measures, which, but for these truthful histo- ries of the past, would never be recognized as of the same age—one district presenting rocky masses, which in another are entirely changed in physical appearance and chemical composition. In Crittenden county the sandstone of the millstone grit and asso- ciated limestones have a great thickness downward, from the produc- tive Coal Measures, to the principal mass of the sub-carboniferous lime- stone on which it rests. At the distance of two hundred feet above the base of this mass of sandstone is to be found a bed of earthy, calcareous, and shaley mate- rials, one hundred and fifty feet thick. The lowest sixty feet of this intercalated bed,.is of a drab:color, filled. with innumerable fragments of 468 PALASONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Retepera Archimedes, spread out horizontally, and almost constituting the entire mass. Further from the base of the bed are found segre- gations, broken and irregular bands and patches of earthy ferruginous limestone. This alternation of limestones and shale beds continues to the top of the mass. It is from the segregated masses, at the top of the first sixty feet of this intercalated calcareous bed, that some of the fossil forms selected for description were obtained; and, so far as it is at present known, cer- tain remarkable forms of this bed have never been found extending ei- ther above or below its geological horizon. The vertical range of the first organic form which will be described is not more than five or six feet. Two crushed specimens were found in 1845; others, again, in 1852. Having recently obtained some quite perfect specimens, it is proposed to describe them under the name of Pentremites obesus. CRINOIDEA. GENUS PENTREMITES. Say. In the year 1820 the genus Pentremites was proposed by Mr. Thomas Say,* in which were placed certain fossil forms, then, for the first time, described. Since the erection of the genus it has been gen- erally recognized, and many species have been added by different au- thors. One of the latest authorities, Messrs. De Koninck and Le Hon, state the genus under the following formula, viz: Basal pieces, 3, one less than the two others. Radial pieces, 15, forked, large. Interradial, 15, small lanceolate. Pseudambulacre, 15, Mouth, 1, central. Anal, 1, lateral. Ovarial openings, 25, situated around the mouth. By a careful examination of well preserved specimens, (not silicifi- ed,) of the different species of this genus, including the typical spe- cies, upon which the genus was founded, it may be seen that the formu- la above quoted should be amended. Pentremites florealis, globosus, py- *See vol. ii, Silliman’s Journal, p. 36, and American Journal of Science and Arts, vol. 2. PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 469 riformis, and others, have severally three small plates or pieces, dis- tinctly separated from the pieces heretofore designated as the “Basal pieces;” these three pieces form the base of the cup, and as they lie be- low the pieces heretofore recognized as basal, are true basal pieces, and the others necessarily become first radials. It is therefore proposed to amend the generic description, and the following formula is offered: GENUS PENTREMITES. Say. Generic Formula: Basal pieces, 13, short, broad, and nearly of equal size. First radial pieces, 18, two hexagonal, perfect; one pentagonal, and imperfect. Second radial pecies, 15, nearly of equal size, long, forked. Interradial pieces, 15, small, lanceolate, nearly equal in size. Pseudambulacree, 15, long, filling the forked pieces, and ter- minating around the mouth. Mouth, 1, central. Ovarial openings, 25, situated around the mouth. Column, cylindrical, perforated, segments luaeq size and thickness. PENTREMITES OBESUS. Lyon. (Plate II. fig. I, la, 16, le, 1d.) Body, elliptical half its heighth, rounded at the summit; the lower part has the form of a broad inverted cone; the diameter is to the heighth as 4 is to 5, (nearly.) Basal pieces, of equal size, sub-quad- rangular, of similar form, low, broad; sides diverging upwards from the columnar articulation; greatest heighth at the line of junction with each other; irregularly concave, upper margin, into which the first radials are fitted, regularly concave at their junction with the column; when joined, they form a low cup, concave at the base, the upper margin forming an unequal sided triangle. First radials two, of equal size, hexagonal ; the third pentagonal, and a little larger than half the size of the hexagonal pieces; this unequal piece probably indicates the anal side of the pentremite; the three pieces, when joined, present a broad shallow cup, the superior margin of which is marked by five broad angular points, between which are three angular, and two irregular, concave depressions, the latter being upon the summits of the hexagonal pieces. 470 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY- Second radials five, divided two-thirds their length, swelling rapidly from their junction with the first radials to the inferior end of the pseud- ambulacral fields; twice as long as wide, the branches increasing in width from their junction with the interradials toward the base; ob- liquely truncated above, the truncation being by a sigmoid line, (not. straight as is usually the case,) meeting and fitting upon the inter- radials by a lap, being beveled from within, the beveled surface being about three times as long as the thickness of the pieces; abutting squarely at their lateral margins against cach other, two. resting upon the complete hexagonal fist radials, and the other three resting upon the beveled sides and in the notches formed by the junction of the first radials; the line of junction of the sides occupies the center of a deep. elliptical grove. Interrudial pieces five, half as broad as long, (externally ;) angular- ly pointed above, and roundly pointed below; 4 as long as the second radials; within the body they are prolonged, and extended under the second radials, and terminate in a long point on either side, forming part of the wall of the pseudambulacral areas; the centre is also ex- tended downwards and pointed, laping under the suture, marking the junction of the second radial pieces. The interradials are marked by fine strize, (lines of increment, ) which conform to the external form of the piece in its different stages of growth. The first and second radials are also marked by lines of increment. In the first radials the lines conform to the sides and upper margins of the pieces; the second radials are marked with lines extending entirely around them, except around the margin of the fork, into which are inserted the pseudambulacral fields. All the pieces are divested of the epidermis and muscular coat. The true external markings are un- known. . Pseudambulacral areas extend from the mouth, at the centre of the summit, a little below the centre of the length of the body, gradually increasing in width by a curved line on either side from below up- wards, to the centre, when they diminish in width until they reach the summit, they are composed of a double row of thin plates, about twelve times as long as thick, about. as: broad as long, joined t gether by their broad faces, terminating a}.the centre margin. of the field, ata PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 471 foramen which divides these pieces; the divided sides of the foramen pieces diverge slightly, and join a similar diverging side from an ad- joining foramen piece, with which iS unites and forms a ridge, which continues to the margin of the field to which they are joined. The field is divided longitudinally in the centre, by a deep groove, the fora- men pieces are marked by a slight groove, which crosses them neat the centre of their length, and runs the whole length, dividing the field into four bands. Where ‘the foramen pieces are crossed by this slight groove, they are frequently indented by a furrow, which sometimes con- tinues the whole length of the pieces; it is frequently nearly oblitera- ted, and then presents a rounded, oval, or lozenge shaped dent or hole. These marks have the appearance of the imperfectly closed sides of two pieces having grown together. At one state of their growth they were, probably, in separate pieces. In the best preserved speci- mens the broad faces are seen to be furrowed or grooved transversely ; the ends of these grooves are seen presenting small punctures, while the sides of the grooves present a double row of little knobs, standing op- posite each other, and joining the two adjacent pieces, which touch each other at these ridges. The ends of the foramen pieces abutting against the centre furrow of the field, are flattened and rounded, the rounding on the inferior side of the piece being greatest. The flatten- ed ends are ornamented by eight or ten diverging ribs, forming on tke ends of the pieces a series of beautiful fan-like ornaments, each slight- ly concave. The foramen pieces number from sixty to seventy to the inch—one specimen having one hnndred and fifty on each side of the field; another (young,) having only forty-three, or eighty-six in each pseudambulacral space. Mouth. The mouth is irregularly rounded, small externally, increas- ing in size as the opening passes downward into the body; it is form- ed of five pieces, lying immediately within the ovarial openings; it was, doubtless, capable of being opened and largely expanded, by the opening of the five petal-like parts into which the body is divided. There is a deep indentation opposite to, and lying between, the lower ends of the pseudambulacral fields ; this indentation p:obably marks the limit of the flexibility of the petals. Qvarial openings five, nearly round ; one much larger th- 1 the oth- ers; the large opening on the point nearly opposite the i aperfect 472 PALEONTOLOGIUAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. first radial. Column cylindrical, formed of pieces of equal thickness, articulating by radiated surfaces, the rays covering the entire surface ;. perforated ; opening small; pentelobate; side arms at irregular inter- vals, frequently opposite each other, formed of similar pieces’to the column. . r a This species differs from all others heretofore described, being much larger; the whole character is coarse and strong; the pieces are re- markably thick—in the young, of a similar sized specimen, being twice the thickness of any known species. The general form. is near- . est that of P. floreales. Say. Length of specimen under description, - - 2.535, inches Breadth of specimen under description, - - 2.25; inches Vertical circumference, - - - - 6.4%, inches. Transverse circumference, - - - - 6.53% inches. In the largest specimen observed, the pseudambulacral field is 1.8.5; - inches; that of our specimen is 1.4%, inches; length of smallest spe- cimen, one inch; the field of this specimen is 59, (half an inch.) The pieces forming the pseudambulacral areas, are thiner than those of the globosus or pyriformis, (small species.) GENUS ASTEROCRINUS. Lyon. Gen. char— Column, cylindrical, perforated; base, bilobate ; prima- ry radials five; secondary radials, first series, ten; second series, twen- ty; lobe pieces, five; arms twenty, formed of a double row of joints. ASTEROCRINUS CAPITALIS. Lyon. (Plate IIT. fig.1, la,16, le, 1d, le, 1f, 1g, 1h, 13, Lk.) Specific description —Body, viewed from above, presents somewhat the form of an irregular five-pointed star*; viewed in profile, erect, it has much the form of a corinthian capital, slightly contracted near its base. Column, cylindrical, composed of numerous, unequal-sized, thin, cir- cular pieces. The articulating facets are striated around their mar- gins—the eleva‘ed ridges of one joint fitting into corresponding depressions in those which adjoin it. Ata short distance from the body ° these pieces ave arranged into the column in sets of three, between two “The spec'mer figured, is slightly crushed, therefore the star-like figure is not so remarkable, PALBONTOLOGIJAL REPORT OF GEGLOGICAL SURVEY. 473 quite thick pieces, those adjoining the thick pieces are quite thin, with one much thicker between; nearer the body the pieces are alternately larger and smaller; their edges are slightly rounded. Basal pieces, two of equal size, nearly alike; united they form a shallow elliptical cup, the upper margin being indented by four concave and two angular notches, swelling below the margin of the cup. The inferior surface presents an impertect elliptical depression, in*the centre of which lies a deep circular pit, concave at the bottom; the outer mar- gin of which is marked around its circumference by grooves and ridges, by which it isjeined to the column. Primary radials five, differing in form ; the piece opposite the anal side is slightly concave on the upper margin ; the ends are nearly par allel to each other; twice as broad as high ; the inferior margin is an- gularly pointed—the point being about the centre of the width of the piece, at which point it is twice as high as at the ends. The four other primary radials are convex below, and fit into the concave indentations of the basal pieces; they are low and broad; not quite as high as the first pieces ; two are concave above, the lower and upper margins being nearly parallel; the other two have two concave depressions above, of unequal size; the ends of the four pieces are obliquely diverging from below upwards—the ends joining the anal piece having the greatest divergency. Secondary radials. These are in two series, the first consisting of ten pieces, no two of which are alike; those resting on the first radial opposite the anal side are convex below; as broad as high, the upper margin of each having two concave indentations ; the junction of these pieces with each other is square, the opposite ends terminating in an angular point. The secondary radial pieces resting upon the first radial piece, to the right of the anal piece, are terminated at both ends by angular points; from one of these rise three secondary radials of the second series ; from the other, only one. The next secondary radials to the rightare, probably, broken, and in our specimen are represented by four quadrangular pieces of unequal size. The other four pieces are nearly of equal size, sub-quadrangular ; twice as broad as high, having two concave notches in the upper mar- gin of each. Secondary radials. The secondary radials are twenty in number ; 60 474 PALE )NTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. nearly equal in size; sub-quadrangular; as broad as high. From _ each of these the arm takes its origin. Anal piece. Lozenge shaped; small; rising from the smallest angu- lar depression in the basal pieces. ‘Lobe pieces. These remarkable appendages are five in number; un- equal in size; thick, rounded, and club-like; twice as broad as thick at the superior extremity, tapering downward, and ending in a broad fan- like manner, at the inferior extremity. They are divided into three un- equal parts, the union of the parts being marked by sutures; the up- per part not unlike a seed vessel, (when first discovered by the coun- try-people these parts were supposed to be petrified seeds, and were call- ed “petrified coffee-nuts;”) it is more than one-third the length of the whole lobe piece; with the middle piece it makes two-thirds the length; the lower part is irregularly serrated, and marked by the impression of muscular attachments; it fits into and is attached to the inside of the basal pieces. Arms. Our species has twenty arms, in sets of four, rising from the second series of secondary radials; they are composed of a double se- ries of joints, beautifully articulating with each other—the salient an- gles of one set filling the re-entering angles of the adjoining set; the arms are regularly tapering from their insertion to the end, where they terminate in a point, rising about one-fourth their length above the highest point of the lobe pieces; each set is separated into pairs by the lobe pieces, which embrace them on either side. It is not certainly known that the arms are provided with cillia. This remarkable crinoid is found in the lower intercalated calcareous beds of the millstone grit of Crittenden county, associated with Pentre- mites obesus, Sc. The vertical range of this species is somewhat great- er than that of that fossil. It was very abundant; immense numbers of the fragments of the lobed pieces are found, especially of that part form- ing its upper extremity. It is evident that they were easily separated, for amongst the multitude of fragments only one specimen has been found sufficiently perfect to show the arrangement of the parts compos- ing it; this is slightly flattened by pressure, and is so much weather- ed that no surface markings can be discovered. By the fragments of the lobe pieces the lower intercalated limestone of the millstone grit may be identified. PALBONTOLOGICAL REPGRT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 475 Its proportions are as follows : Heighth, ss - - - - 1.,2,5, inches, Greatest breadth across the lobe pieces, —- 1.55, inches Greatest breadth at the top of calyx—narrow side, - - - - - 1%, inch. Greatest breadth at the top of calyx—wide side, - - - - - - {55 inch. ' Heighth of calyx, - - - - - 28. inch Heighth of radials, - } - - - - to's inch Heighth of basal pieces, - - - - =’, inch Long diameter of basal pieces, Short diameter of basal pieces, - - - ’ Hy t 2| | a je je oto S Q = 2| so S| | vat fa} ie) a The genus Asterocrinus, by its lobed basal pieces, is allied to Dicho- crinus, also by the number of its primary radials Here the analogy ceases. Dichocrinus partakes much of the character of the Platyeri- nites. The primary radials are generally longer, and the calyx high; the radials of all known species of Dichocrinus are higher than the basal pieces, while in Asterocrinus the breadth of the radials are equal to twice their hight. In the remarkable lobe pieces it is distinguished and separated from all known genera. It is evident the species under consideration had no vaulted covering to the stomach, as the lobe pieces rise from the basal pieces, (to which they are attached,) and nearly fill the cavity of the body. The lobe pieces are free, except at the point of attachment at the base, were expansile, and are indeed®aux- iliaries of the arms, probably serving in part to sieze and crush its food. Fixed to the base by a muscular ligament, articulating by joints, they were evidently capable of opening with, or even independently of the arms. Our specimen is ¢losed ; the arms are folded between the lobe pieces. Six half sets of the arms have their entire length, and are folded toward the centre of the summit, which they do not reach, leav- ing the junctures of the lobe pieces exposed. Ina paper read before the Academy of Sciences, at St. Louis, Mis- souri, in 1857, our specimen is referred to, and classed with Dichocri- nus; we differ from the author of tbat paper, and hold that our species is essentially different, and should be separated from Dichocrinus. ° 476 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. ASTEROCRINUS (?) CORONARIUS. Lyon. (Plate I. fig. 1, 1a.) It is with a considerable hesitation that this remarkable and hither- to unknown fossil is refered to Asterocrinus, as it has neither basal, radial, or arm pieces. This unique-crinoidal fragment was found, with others, associated with Pentremites obesus, Asterocrinus capitalis, &c., in the lower intercalated calcareous bed of the millstone grit of Critten- den county. This specimen is evidently the summit and part of the abdominal cavity and walls of a crinoid, and is provisionally refer- red to Asterocrinus, which it greatly resembles, by the arrangement of the tumid star-like points; seen in profile it resembles a ducal coronet orcrown. ‘The body is pentagonal, having equal sides; the angular corners are removed; an angular notch is provided, into which three of the point pieces are inserted into the body. The point on the right of the oral opening is joined to the body by an irregular line, nearly straight; that on the left is joined by a curved line, with an angular deflection near the side farthest from the mouth. The marginal bor- ders of the pointed pieces are raised, and the pieces are fluted about two-thirds their length; they are thick, heavy, and solid ; curved on the lower side, and when resting upon the upper surface, present the appearance of a thick last, from the instep to the toe. Within the pointed pieces are arranged twenty-five polygonal pieces—those imme- diately surrounding the mouth are convex, the others are concave ; the outer series are larger; two are hexagonal; the others are imperfect rhombs; those within the point to the right of the mouth are small and long; the others are still smaller, of pentagonal, hexagonal, and triangular forms. A few of the small pieces surrounding the oral open- ing have been lost. : Mouth, sub-centyral. Lower surface. Between the pointed pieces are three angular-prom- inences, and four angular depressions ; these are probably the articula- ting surfaces to which the lower part of the body and calyx were join- ed; above these notches and prominences, and on the surface between the pointed pieces are rounded and grooved impressions, probably pro- duced by the pressure cf the arms(?) No surface markings are found on the specimen, which has evidently lost its dermal covering; they would have been lost had they existed upon it. PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 477 Size of the specimen. Length of the pointed pieces, (the longest piece,) - - - - - - - - -75%y inch. Length of the pointed pieces, (shortest piece,) — - {5% inch. Longest diameter across the points, - - 1.35, inches. Longest diameter of body, upper side, - - 755 inch. Longest diameter of body, lower side, - - a4 inch. Height of body to junction of pointed pieces, = - qty meh, Height of body to highest point of pointed pieces, 45; inch. From mouth to nearest side, = - - - - 35% inch. From mouth to most distant side, = - - - .33%5 inch. GENUS GRAPHIOCRINUS. DeKoninck and LeHon. De Koninck and LeHon, who established this genus, have given the generic formula as follows, viz : *Basal pieces, 5. Radial pieces, 2x5. Anal pieces, 1. Interradial pieces, 0. Arms, 10, not divided. GRAPHIOCRINUS—14 BRACHIALIS. Lyon. (Plate I. fig. 1, 2a, 2b.) The anatomical structure of our species corresponds so nearly to this genus that it is confidently referred to it. Column. A short piece of the column, still attached to our speci- men, is composed of thin circular pieces, rounded on the margin, dif- fering considerably in size—alternately a larger and smaller one ; perforated ; the form of the perforation cannot be distinctly made out. Basal -preces five; long lanceolate; thick at the outer point; divided by deep well defined sutures, from the inferior point of the primary radials, to the opening of the columnar-pit, where the pieces join evenly together; the superior points curved upwards, from the columns out- ward; the pieces are grooved by a broad concave furrrow, which termi- *From the figure given by De Koninck and LeHon,I have much doubt if these are the true basal pieces.. Species of kindred form are found with fine basal pieces within the columnar de- pression; these are generally covered by the column ; always alternating with the basal pie- ces, as recognized in the above formula. There are another class of crinoids having a pen- tagonal basal piece, not indented, divided by five sutures running from the columnar pit to the centre of the sitles, forming the pentagon. Zeddrinttes Magnoliafornis—Trovst, is thus distin- guished. 478 PALEZ )NTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. nates at the commencement of the upward curvature of the points of the pieces. The piece to the right of the anal pieces is larger than the others, and the first primary radial rises from its truncated point; in. this respect the drawing is imperfect—the side toward the anal pieces should be more elevated. The surface of all the pieces is smooth. Primary radials five; somewhat heart-shaped; concave above, round- ly pointed below; the pieces on either side of the anal pieces are not symetrical—the side of the left hand one having lost a portion of its edge, against which rests one of the anal pieces, while that on the right side has lost a portion of its inferior left margin, which joins the largest anal piece. The primary radials of the second series* are five in number; sub- quadrangular; width, equal twice the greatest heighth ; differing in form and size; sides square and vertical; swelling rapidly from the sides toward the center; curved upwards on the superior margin, and termi- nating in a rounded prominent knob, at or near the center of the pieces. Secondary radials (axilary, Miller,) ten; four are larger than the others; similar in form to the primary radials of the first series invert- ed; boldly prominent, each supporting two secondary radials of the second series; the six others differ in form, and are less than half the size of the first four, each supporting a single piece of the secondary radials; slightly prominent. Secondary radials, second series, consists of fourteen subquadrangu- lar pieces, differing slightly in size; less prominent than the first series, from which the arms take their origin. Arms fourteen, composed of a double row of pieces, slightly rounded» fitting deeply into each other—the salient angles of the right hand row entering the retreating angles of the opposite row. Remarks.—Our specimen has been slightly crushed; the sunerive ends of the arms are broken off; the calyx is remarkable for the depth of the columnar depression, and the prominence of the rounded knobed terminations of the pieces forming it, also, in having fourteen arms— the typical form of the genus having only ten. It was found in the calcareous beds, near the hase of the millstone grit of Crittenden coun- * The primary radials of the second series are here equivalent to the scapular pieces of Mil- ler, correaponding to the scapular pieces of Encrinites moniliformia. PALASONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 479 ty, associated with P. obesus, Asterocrinus capitalis, A. coronarius, &c. Ranging rather higher in the bed than either of the others. The verti- cal range is not known. It has not, so far as we are informed, been discovered in any other geological horizon. ACTINOCRINUS. Miller. This genus was established by Miller in 1821, and was defined as follows: “A crinoid animal, with a round column, perforated by a round ali- mentary canal. At thesummit of the column is placed a pelvis, formed of three plates, on which five costals, and one irregular, adhere; which are succeeded by the’ second costals and intercostals, and the scapulae, from whence five arms proceed, forming two hands, with several tentac- culated fingers. Round side-arms proceed at irregular distances from the column, which terminates at the base in a fassicular bundle or roots of’ fibres.”’ Recently De Koninck and De Hon, in treating of this genus, have adopted a different nomenclature. The Actinocrinus, as defined by these authors, is as follows: Generic Formula: Basal pieces, 3, of a quadrangular form. Radial pieces, 3X6. Interradial pieces, 34. Anal pieces, 6 Brachial pieces, 1, or 25. Column, eylindrical; canal, pentagonal. ACTINOCRINUS ABNORMIS. Lyon. (Plate IV. fig.1, 1a, 16.) Body. The general form of the most symetrical of this species is sub-globular; others are quite shallow; saucer shaped; with a very low, irregular; covering in others the circle of the body, at the insertion of the arms, is deeply emarginate. The form of the inferior part of the calyx is constantly that of a shallow rounded cup, slightly indented around the columnar pit. The basal pieces, and the radials of the 1st and 2nd series, are also constant characteristics. The superior surface has a continuous covering, composed of small pieces; the spaces opposite the junction of the arms with the body have 480 PALE NTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. generally prominent tubercles, usually rounded and low, sometimes long and sharp-pointed; an additional knob or point usually marks the summit, which is sub-central and near the anal side; around these prominent pieces, are arranged, in a circular manner, small polygonal pieces of various sizes, and the interspaces between these circular patches are filled with pieces of irregular forms; in some of the best preserved several knobs are joined by the interspace, having a central piece, around which are arranged, circularly, small pieces—one piece of the circle forming the connection between the centers of the adjoining circles. Oar description is that of a single specimen, differing in many par- ticulars from all others of the species; yet it is believed that no accu- rate observer could fail to roorganize every specimen of the species, by features they have in common, which distinguishes them from oth- er species. Basal pieces. The basal pieces, when undivided, presents an oblong hexagonal space—the middle perforation being sub-central; when di- vided, the sutures from the central opening terminate at the center of the inferior margin of the alternate radial pieces of the first series; by this division producing two pieces nearly equal in size, and one gene- rally smaller than the others. Radial pieces, 1st serves. Consists of six hexagonal pieces, (one of these pieces is sometimes pentagonal or obscurely hexagonal,) differing somewhat in size and form; slightly concave—the concavity extending over the whole area of each piece; when arranged in the cup they are nearly horizontal, being only slightly curved. Primary radials, 2nd series, five; usually four hexagonal and one pentagonal; not unfrequently one of the radials is abnormal, and rises between two of the radials of the first series. Fig. 1b, plate IV, ex- hibits this anomalous arrangement. Fig. 1a, plate IV, shows all the pieces in a normal condition (hexagonal.) The 3rd series of primary radials consist of four pieces septilate- ral, and one hexagonal; nearly equal in size. Secondary radials, 1st series, consists of eleven pieces, varying in size and form—some being heptagonal, hexagonal, and one being pent- agonal; this last piece rises from the anomalous ray. (Fig. 1b, plate IV.) PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 481 Interradial fields. The interradial fields are four in number, each filled with six pieces, differing in form and size; arranged by one forming the base; from the sloping upper sides of this rise two others; between these latter and their outer upper side, three others; upon these rest the interaxilary pieces, eleven in number; these vary much in form and size in different specimens. Nearly all the pieces composing the 2nd and 3rd primary radials, and the interradial fields are flattened or slightly concave; this is char- acteristic and common to the species. Anal pieces. The anal pieces vary much in different specimens— from 14 to 18 of irregular form; being neither constant in form nor number. The Arms vary in number from ten to fourteen, at their insertion into the calyx; they are very irregular in their arrangement, some- times coming off in five regular pairs; again three pairs—one set of three, and one set of one, making ten; again, three sets of four each, one set of three, one of two, and a single arm, standing by itself, mak- ing fourteen. Amongst the great number of the species that have come under our-observation, no two have ever been observed with precisely the same arrangement in the zone forming the region of the arms—suffi- cient difference frequently existing, in different specimens, to warrant a separation of the species if the technical arrangement should be re- lied upon. By the low calyx, concave surface of the pieces, and gen- eral appearance, they will, however, be referred oa; species. Dinensions : Greatest heighth of calyx, o's inch. Least heighth of calyx, — - - - - oy inch. Heigth from base to summit, {yy inch. Greatest breadth, - - - - - 1.55% inches. Least breadth, - - = = - 1.53%, inches, Position and locality. Very abundant in the limestone immediate- ly at the base of the “Devonian black slate,” and above the beds of Hydraulic cement stone. In the vicinity of Louisville, about fifty feet above the range of Catenepora escharoides bed. Actinocrinus abnor- mis is especially abundant in the bed above alluded to, exposed at the quarries, on the south fork of Bear grass creek; at Rock Island, near 8] 482 PALEHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. the old Tariscon’s mill, at the foot of the falls of the Ohio; and at the crossing of the Jeffersonville and Columbus railroad, on Silver creek, Clarke county, Ia. It has not been found extending beyond this bed—which varies in thickness from five to twelve or thirteen feet. Of the numerous specimens obtained by collectors, most of them are mere fragments; very few have more than half or three-fourths of the head complete—many not so much. This is the most abundant fos- sil form of the bed at the locality on Beargrass. GENUS DOLATOCRINUS. Lyon. Gen. char.— Column, round; composed (near the body) of alternate large and small pieces; perforation pentalobate; rather large; basal pieces five; pentagonal; small; sometimes covered by the column. First radials five, hexagonal; second radials five, quadrangular; third radials five, pentagonal; jirst secondary radials, ten or eleven, generally hexagonal; second secondary radials quite irregular, varying from ten to thirteen; ¢néeraxilarys, those rising from the radials from five to seven, whilst those which rise from the interradial fields vary from ten to twelve; interradials, first series, five, large nonagonal ; the second series, of five, differing in form; arms ten, formed of circu- lar pieces of equal thickness, tapering rapidly toward the superior end; mouth sub-central proboscidate; summit covered by small polygonal pieces. DOLATOCRINUS LACUS. Lyon. Plate IV. fig. 2, 2a, 2b, 2c. Specific character.—Body sub-globose; truncated below; columnar- pit broad and deep; summit somewhat conical, prolonged by a probos- cis; column round; near the body composed of alternate large and smaller pieces articulating by flat radiated surfaces; the upper joint of the column is hemispherical, and partially fills the columnar-pit, nearly and sometimes quite concealing the basal pieces; columnar per- foration rather large and pentalobate. Basal pieces five;* pentagonal; nearly of equal size; not quite as *The basal pieces are only seen in fragments and crushed specimens; from these we are led to believe that the basal pieces are five in number; should future investigation determine that the base is divided into only three parts, the base would then resemble that of Platycrinus, Miller, not Austin Being now fully pursuaded that this arrangement of five basals, alternat- ing with five first radials, is the structure of the animal, we have so described it. PALABONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 483 high as wide; lying deep in the columnar-pit, and frequently conceal- ed by the insertion of the columns, as in fig. 2¢, plate IV. First radial pieces five; hexagonal; nearly equal in size; twice as broad as high; ornamented by sculptured ridges, which terminate at a longish or rounded knob, near the margin of the columnar depres- sion. Second radial pieces five; sub-quadrangular; wider than high; near- ly of the same size; the center of the pieces are ornamented by a knob, which terminates at this upper margin. In specimens of the aged of this species the knob is frequently prolonged, and assumes the form of a sharp ridge. Third radials five; pentagonal; broader than high; same size, or- namented near their center by a knob. Secondary radials, first series ten of irregular form; as large as or larger than the third primary radials; principally hexagonal—some- times one or more are pentagonal. Secondary radials, second series, varying in number from ten to thir- teen; irregular in form and size. Jnteraxilary pieces; these pieces are variable, differing in form and size, and are distinguished as trian- gular and quadrangular—the triangular pieces having their origin in the radial pieces; eight in number; those originating from the inter- radial piece of the second series are quadrangular; twelve or more in number. Interradials five; very large; nonagonal; angularly pointed below ; truncated on the superior margin; from these rise the secondary ra- dials, five in number, four of which are pentagonal; pointed at the summit; inferior margin as wide as the superior margin of the first interradials on which they rest; the other piece is quadrangular. The arms are ten in number, rising in pairs; rather short; tapering rapidly ; composed of ovoid flat pieces, of equal thickness—one side exhibiting the articulating surfaces from which tentaculz have been detached ; the form and arrangement of the tentacule are unknown. Summit. The sammitis covered by ratherlarge polygonal pieces, va- rious in form; generally ornamented by small granular prominences. Proboscis or oral tube. In its complete form it is unknown; judg- ing from the fragments found attached to the specimens, it is small com- pared with the same appendage in other crinoids; composed of small polygonal pieces. 484 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. External markings. The body is adorned by a most beautiful net- work of raised triangular figures; the points of the principal triangu- lar figures rise from, and terminate at, the centre of the first interradi- al pieces; a subordinate set of figures terminate at the centre of all the pieces below the arms. In some specimens the lines are continu- ous, in others, interrupted. The summit pieces are sometimes adorn- ed by a single prominent granule; in other specimens, many of the pieces are ornamented by a number of granules, arranged in lines across some of the pieces in nearly parallel rows, or in a circular band around a more prominent central one. Geological position and locality. Found in great numbers in the limestone immediately over the hydraulic cement beds, Jefferson coun- ty, Kentucky, on Beargrass creek; same beds on Rock Island, Falls of the Ohio river, and Silver creek, Clarke county, Indiana. In the neighborhood of Louisville, resting on the hydraulic cement bed, and below the black slate of the Denovian period, occurs a thin bed of limestone, its base resting on the cement stone bed ; in this is to be found a partial bed of conglomerate, of ferruginous gravel ; a similar bed of conglomerate exists below the cement bed. The cement bed at Beargrass creek is from four to six inches thick. Northwsetwaardly, three and a half miles, at the foot of the Falls, on the Indiana side of the river, this stone is eighteen feet thick; from the bed, at the foot of the Falls, large quantities of hydraulic cement is manufactured, of superior quality. Resting on the cement bed, as before stated, is a bed of lime- stone from four to eight feet thick; the inferior two feet abounds in crinoide, in fact, the bed is literally made up of the remains of these animals. Then succeeds, about two feet abounding in fossil corals, amongst which are a few entrochites ; these are again succeeded by Crenoidea, Brachiopoda, and Trilobites. Upon the whole rests a bed of black slate, variously estimated from one hundred to one hundred and forty feet thick. A few individuals of our genus, and probably of the same species, occur at the base of the hydraulic beds; these are seldom well pre- served ; should these prove to be our species, the vertical range of the species will be about twenty-five feet; should they prove to be differ- ent, the range will be only about two and a half or three feet. PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 485 GENUS VASOCRINUS. Lyon. Gen. char—Body vase shaped ; twice as wide as high; basal pieces five; pentagonal; pointed at their superior margin; primary radials five; rising between the points of the basal pieces; secondary radials five; broad; irregularly pentagonal ; arms five; single ; composed of cylindrical pieces; anal piece one; hexagonal; large; summit un- known ; colwmn unknown. VASOCRINUS VALENS. Lyon. (Plate IV. fig.3, 34a.) Basal pieces five; low, broad; pointed at their summit; swelling at the base ; forming a shallow cup, with perpendicular sides ; bottom slightly concave; superior margin divided by obtuse points into five broad, shallow, angular notches; the base articulates with the column by a surface marked by strize, radiating from a small circular opening. Radial pieces five; smooth; sub-hexagonal; differing slightly in size ; higher than wide; rising between the basal pieces. Secondary radials five in number ; smooth; pentagonal; nearly twice as wide as high; the median line of these pieces are nearly horizontal ; the truncated face, for the insertion of the arms, eliptical, concave, perforated near the centre, deeply sulcate above the perforation ; the sides are joined together, curving upward and terminating on the sum- mit between the arms; the piece on the left of the anal piece is much larger than either of the others, and covers the points of two of the radials, whilst that on the right of it is much smaller than the others, and rises from the point and left side of the primary radial, beneath it. The anal piece is large, sub-hexagonal, rising between two of the pri- mary radials, and extends above the lower margin of the axillary face of the second primary radials. Arms composed of cylindrical pieces, their legnth and diameter being nearly equal; perforated and deeply sulcate on the superior side. Dimensions : Diameter of the base, - - - - -45°5 inch Height of the base, —- - - - - yy inch. Height of the body, - - - - - 5° Inch. Greatest diameter, - - - - - 1.,%3 inches. Diameter of the axillary articulation, - - ys'5 Inch. 486 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Remarks. This remarkable crinoid was obtained several years since at the quarries on Beargrass creek, near Louisville, where it was found associated with Actinscrinus. Dolatocrinus, &c. It is very rare—this Specimen is the only one of this species heretofore obtained. VASOCRINUS SCULPTUS. Lyon. (Plate IV. fig. 3b, 3, 3d, 3e.) Body small; vase shaped; section at the junction of the arms pen- tagonal; side of pentagon above the anal pieces nearly twice as long as either of the others; the surface is roughened by raised sculpture; the center of the pieces below the arms are all prominent. On either side of the sutures marking the junction of the basal pieces is a raised rib, which terminates at the center of the first radial pieces lying above the sutures. Similar ribs cover the body, extending from near the center of each to the center of all the contiguous pieces, (except the basal pieces,) thus dividing the surface into nearly equal-sided triangu- lar spaces, deeply depressed at the center, and curving up to the ribs which define them; at the end of the ribs the triangular spaces are joined by a narrow grooved avenue, not quite so deep as the center of the spaces. Basal pieces five; pentagonal; as high as wide; extending beneath to the columnar perforation; junction with the column slightly con- cave. Radial pieces five; hexagonal; four of equal size; as high as wide; one much larger than the others, rising between the points of the basal pieces. Secondary radials (scapule, Miller) five; irregularly pentagonal; nearly equal in size, except the piece on the left of the anal pieces, which is nearly twice as large as either of the others; articulating facet of the arms uneven; perforated; sulcated upon the upper side; the pieces curve upwards at their line of junction, and terminate upon the summit above the line of the arms. Anal pieces two; hexagonal; one equaling in size the first radial pieces; the other is quite small. Arms five; single; structure beyond the first joint unknown; they start from the body in a horizontal direction. Column unknown. PALEOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 487 Geological position and locdlity. Found in the limestone about five feet beneath the Devonian black slate, and above the beds of Hydraulic cement-stone, Jefferson county, and in the same geological position on the falls of the Ohio. It does not appear, from what is known of it, to have a very great vertical range, probably not more than three or four feet. OLIVANITES VERNEUILII. Troost. Ref. and Syn. Pentremites Vernewili’, Troost, sixth report on the Ge- ology of the State of Tennessee, Nashville, 1841. Pentremites Vernewi- li (Beadle) @ Orbigny Prodrome de Pal., Stratigr 1, p. 102. Eleacrinus Verneuilii Roemer. Monographie der Fossilen Cri- noiden familie der Blastoideen, §c., Berlin, 1852, p. 59. This fossil is found in great abundance in rocks of the Denovian period, at the Falls of the Ohio river, and on Beargrass creek near Louisville, Jefferson county, Kentucky, and in other localities. Professor Troost distinguished this fossil in 1841, as Pentremites Verneuilii. Ina list of fossil crinoids of Tennessee, published in the proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science ; of the meeting held at Cambridge, Boston, 1850, the learned professor has removed it from Pentremites ; having erected a new genus for its reception, and distinguished it as Olivanites Vernewli. Ina private letter, written August 3d, 1849, to a distinguished lady of Tennessee, Professor Troost removes Pentremites Verneuilii to Olivani- tes. Dr. Fred. Roemer, in an elaborate and able work on the Family Blastoidea, referred to above, has re-described this fossil’under the generic title of Eleacrinus, (retaining Prof. Troost’s specific name,) with excellent figures by Hugo Troschel. For want of well preserved specimens, both the figures and description are defective in many res- pects. For these reasons, and possessing quite perfect specimens, it is pro- posed to describe these, and restore the name proposed by that pioneer of western geology, Dr. Troost. During the last seventeen years hundreds of these curious forms, known as “Petrified Hickorynuts,” have passed through our hands, having been distributed to collectors at home and abroad. Dr. Roe- 488 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. mer’s description was probably made from some of those furnished by us during his visit to this country. Of the multitudes collected we have now over three hundred speci- mens, and out of this large number, not more than five or six expose the true structure of the body, especially the arrangement of the base, and only two exhibit the pieces at the summit of it. OLIVANITES VERNEUILII. Troost. (Plate V. fig. 1, la, 18, le, 1d.) Description.—The body is illipsoidal ; the usual proportion between the height and width is as 4 to 3; in the more globose it is sometimes as 3 is to 2,%,. The whole surface in well preserved specimens, shows a remarkable fine sculpture. The cup, below the ambulacral fields, consists of eleven pieces; above the cup and between it and the sum- mit are four interradial lanceolate pieces, one anal piece, five pseudam- bulacree, and ten large pieces; one on either side of these, making thirty-six prominent pieces, exclusive of those at the summit ; making in all about fifty pieces. Only very short pieces of the column hav- ing been found attached, little of its structure is known; the small part found attached is round or imperfectly pentagonal. The colum- nar perforation is pentalobate.* The Basal pieces, three in number, are very minute; lozenge shaped or quadrilateral; situated at the bottom of the columnar-pit; always concealed when the column is present. Primary radials ave also three in number; small; situated within the columnar pit; two are hexagonal, and one somewhat lozenge-shaped; nearly of equal size; each piece is ornamented by three tuburcles, one on either side of the sutures, near the outer margin of the joined pieces, and one near the center of the pieces; they are usually entirely concealed by the column—a single specimen has been seen that ex- hibited a part of these pieces when the column was present. Primary radials, second series. These pieces are five in number; forked; one-sixth wider, at the spread of the branches, than high; the inferior margin is deflected within the columnar-pit, and rests on the outer or superior margins of the first radials, as in Pentremites, with this difference, one of the second radials rises from an angular point of *A single specimen, outof many, exhibits this structure ; nearly all the specimens are par- tially silicified, and the structure partially obliterated. PALMONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 489 one of the hexigonal pieces. The bending or angular deflection of these pieces, into the columnar-pit, is most remarkable, forming, as they do, a margin about equal to their thickness around the external margin of the columnar-pit, around the column presenting the appear- ance as if their junction with the first primary radials was against their inner face, and not by the inferior margin of the pieces, as is usually the case with crinoidea. The sides of the pieces or branches of the forks are nearly of equal width, tapering or curving slightly from within the fork outward; the lateral margins are straight; their summits are variously truncated, sometimes by a straight line from within the fork outward and downward; again, by an additional corner re- moved from the point within the fork, and sometimes they are found irre- gularly rounded from the center of the branches to either side; all these forms are seen ina single specimen. The angular indentation between the branches of the fork terminates in a prominent cup, from which pro- ceeds, upward, on either branch of the fork, defining the space between them, a sharp prominent margin marking the limit of the branches of the fork. The branches of the second primary radials are also marked with lines of increment, which conform to the upper and outer margins of the pieces. The lines are prominent, and are probably the remains of the processes marking the margins of the pieces above alluded to. Interradial pieces—(No. 4, fig. 1, plate v.) These five pieces are long, (seven times as long as their greatest width;) lanceolate, rising from the notched and curved superior margins of two adjacent branches of the second primary radial pieces, and terminating at the summit of the body, between the ovarial (?) openings; they are divided longi- tudinally by a line from which fine depressed strize diverge at an angle of abont 60° (upward and outward,) dividing the parts of the piece on either side of the center line into flat bands, equal in width to the ribs on the pieces on either side of the pseudambulacral fields, and the pieces composing these, the ambulacree—sixty of which are contained in an inch.* The parts here designated interradial pieces, in the best preserved * Dr. Roemer’s figure represents this part, which is the middle of his ‘* deltoid pieces,’’ as covered with punctures, (‘“‘chayrinartig bedect.”’) In the above description this part is called interradial piece, and is separated from the pseudambulacral fields, and from the spaces on either side of them. In no specimen, of thousands, has this punctured surface been observed; it is probably the effect of cleaning with a pointed instrument. It has been observed in some so clean ed. ‘ 62 490 PAI EONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Specimens, are separated from the pieces on either side of the pseudam- bulacree, by a sharply defined angular ridge, surrounding the whole piece except at the junction with the branches of the radials below it. Anal piece. This piece is wider than the interradial pieces; nearly equal in width in its whole length; rounded at its summit, having a circu- lar notch in its upper margin, the sides of which are frequently trunca- ted obliquely downward from the sides of the notch, above which is situated the large ovoid opening. It rises from the summits of the second radials, like the interradial pieces, and like those it is marked with strice. This piece has much irregularity in form and adjustment with reference to the body, in different specimens, being disposed above the general surface at its superior extremity, and sometimes below it; frequently the circular notch occupies the whole summit of the piece, which is then very prominent, and prolonged above the summit of the body, while in other specimens it terminates a considerable distance below the summit. The pseudambulacral fields, five in number, rise from the angular notch in the summits of the second radials, and terminate at the ‘sum- mit; they are alike in size and arrangement of parts; each field ‘consists of three parts, the middle of which is the longest; rising from the bottom of the notch, as before stated, it is continued to the openings around the summit, which it divides, and is continued beyond them toward the center of the crown, and is lost under the small pieces ar- ranged within the openings. It is divided by a line into equal parts running its whole length, each of which is again divided into a line of pores, anda ridge. In some states of specimens the mesial line is deeply grooved, on either side of which is a rounded ridge, equal in width to the line of pores; thus each field is divided into four parts of equal width—i. e., two lines of pores and two ridges lying between them. In large specimens their width is ,5, of an inch. The pores are ovoid, the long diameter lying transversely with the specimen, about 60 to the inch; they terminate at the reniform larger openings at the summit. The openings at the summit have their long diameter parallel to the length of the pore pieces. The sides of the suture dividing the pore pieces is beautifully orna- mented by fan-like figures, lying nearly opposite the pores; they are nearly triangular in form, composed of six diverzing ridges, having a PALHONIOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 49] common origin opposite the pores; these are divided by grooves of un- equal depth, increasing in size and depth from the origin of the ridges to the bottom of the groove, quite analogous to the same part in Pen- tremites obesus. The pores communicate with the antaon of the body. On either side the pore pieces are supported by a piece, two to each field, ten in all, of equal width, nearly of the same form, ornamented with grooves and ridges. The grooves rise at a pore, and cross the pieces transversely, and terminate against the interradial pieces, the whole surface of the pieces being covered by grooves and ridges, which are equal in size to the pore, or the division between the pores, against which they severally originate. These are again crossed obliquely from the outside of the pieces upward, by a set of ribs which rise against the interradials and anal piece, and cross the supporting pieces of the pseudambulacre. The summit within the circle of the large pores (ovarian openings ?) is divided into about twenty-two small pieces, six of which are dis- posed around the seventh, which occupies the centre of the crown. They are nearly of equal size, polygonal or nearly circular; without the line of the six pieces, and falling into the indentations around the circle formed by them, are smaller pieces, and on either side of the outer circle of the ovarian (?) openings are small linear pieces, abut- ting against the small pieces outside of the first circle; all the pieces exept the linear ones are studded with a number of small prominent granules. . Specimens of this fossil are found ranging from .,3,% in inch, to an inch and .55%; in length. The relative proportion of one of the medium sized, rather globose specimens is as follows: Greatest length, - - - - - - I Length from bottom of columnar-pit to summit, 1.45 inches. Greatest diameter, - - - - - 1 Least diameter, - - - - - 1 Length of second primary radials, - - - .25_ inch. Length of first primary radials, —- - - ae inch Length of basal pieces, - - - - yoy inch. Greatest length of the pieces, - - 1.2% inches. Greatest width of pseudambulacral fields, - 75% inch. 492 PALEONTOLOGICAL BEPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Greatest width of interradial pieces, - - ois inch. - Greatest length of interradial pieces, - - 1.5%, inches. Greatest width of anal piece, - - - - 5% Inch. Greatest length of anal piece, - - - 1.,°,5, inches. Diameter of columnar pit, — - - - - > inch. Geological positiom and locality——Found in rocks of the Denovian period, about five or six feet below the hydraulic cement-beds, in a rock of peculiar physical character, distinguished as the Olivanite bed ; _the bed varies in thickness from one inch to two feet. The space be- tween the Olivanite bed and the hydraulic cement beds, abounds in fragments of Sprrifer cultrajugatus, and affords very few fossils, ex- cept a few washed and rolled corals. The Olivanite bed is rather local, although these fossils have a large horizontal range, the beds are in interrupted patches. The beds at the Falls of the Ohio have proba- bly been the most productive. They have also been found on Bear- grass creek, Jefferson county, near Louisville ; on Silver and Fourteen- mile creeks, Clarke county, Indiana ; and near Columbus, Ohio. OLIVANITES ANGULARIS. Lyon. = The preservation of the specimens of this species is such, that a distinct character cannot be traced of the fine external markings. The general arrangement of the parts, however, are distinctly visible, . war- ranting the opinion, that the generic character is that of Olivanites, although some of the parts are not distinctly preserved. Specific Character—Plate V. fig. 2, 2a, 2. Description —The body is sub-ovoid ; the diameter of the specimen under consideration, from the anal side, transversely, to the highest point on the opposite side, is 2, of an inch; the diameter parallel with the flattened anal side 45, of an inch; the height being 43, of an inch. ‘he anal side between the pore pieces, on either side of it, is nearly twice as wide as either of the other sides. The outline is very much inflated on the line of the pore pieces, whilst the interra- dials are deeply seated in the groove between them. The pseudambu- lacral fields rise sharply angular from the interradial pieces, which are much wider, and consequently have a much more rapid taper than the same pieces in Olivanites Verneuilii. The pseudambulacral fields are also narrower in proportion than in that species; the summit and basal PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 493 extremity are broader and flatter. The first series of primary radials are prominent, and raise out of the basal pit, which they do not in Oli- vanites Vernewlii. Viewed from either end, this species presents an irregularly sided pentagon, the bounding lines of which are concave toward the body of the specimen. ‘This striking difference of section transversely, will at once distinguish this from 0. Vernewilit. Geological position and locality—A few specimens of this species have been found in the rocks of the Denovian period, lying between the black slate and the hydraulic cement beds at Rock Island, at the foot of the Falls of the Ohio; on Beargrass creek, near Louisville ; also, on Silver creek, Clarke county, Indiana. They have a limited vertical range, and are only found near the base of the beds in which they occur. Olivanites Verneuilii does not, so far as our observation ex- tends, rise into the beds above the hydraulic beds, in which it is not found. CODASTER ALTERNATUS. Lyon. (Plate 3,3 4,36.) Body long ; irregularly conical ; summit level in the centre; slop- ing slightly toward the outer end of the pseudambulacral fields; hor- izontal section at the lower extremity of the fields pentagonal, the angles of the pentagon being at the ends of the pseudambulacral field. Basal pieces three; pentagonal; of equal size; gibbous; when joined forming a minute triangular cup, larger than the inferior extrem- ity of the joined first radials fitting upon it; perforated in the centre by a very small circular opening. ‘ Radial pieces three—two hexagonal complete, one pentagonal, and incomplete, (as in pentremites); the upper margin of the hexagonal pieces are concave in the centre, the corners obliquely truncated, form- ing, with the pentagonal piece, a deep cup, having the upper margin indented with two concave and three angular notches, from which rise five radials of the second series, two fitting upon the concave notches at the summits of the complete pieces; the other three rising from the angular notches between the three pieces. Radial pieces, second series, five; reaching the summit; twice as long as wide; the summit of each indented by an angular notch, broader than deep; rising from the base of each, and tapering to a poinhat the inferior extremities of the notches, is an elevated rounded 494 PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. rib, ornamented transversely by fine rounded strize, while the margins of the pieces are similarly ornamented, by coarser striee, lying parallel with the margin of the pieces, and terminating against the sides of the rib which occupies the middle. The sides of the second primary -ra- dials are sometimes closed upon the summit, nearly obliterating the triangular field between the pseudambulacral fields. The mesial line is always straight. ‘The mouth seems to be situated at the centre of the summit, from which proceed five minutely granulated, porous, pseud- ambalacree, terminating at the angular corners of the summit, in the notch of the second primary radials, forming a prominent ridge, divid- ed, longitudinally, into four equal parts by three indented lines, the deepest of which rises within the mouth. The spaces on either side of the middle suture are divided by small prominences, divergixg from the suture, and terminating within a circular depression, on the inner margin of the outer spaces. Around the mouth, at the junction of the ambulacral fields, are five rounded prominent tubercles—above the ovarial opening, in some specimens, another is added, which is still more prominent ; from four of these tubercles.diverge four prominent ridg- es, tapering from the mouth outward, one to the middle of four of the straight sides, the fifth space is without a ridge, being occupied by an ovate or circular (ovarial or anal) opening. The depressed, triangular intervening spaces are filled with seven or more thin pieces, lying par- allel to the pseudambulacral fields, articulating with the summit of the second radial, and the prominent ridge lying between the pseudambu- lacree. These pieces were evidently capable of being compressed or depressed ; the point at the lateral junction of the second radials is in some specimens folded over toward the mouth so much as to entirely obscure these triangular spaces by covering them. The ovarial or anal opening is always over the radial, to the right of the incomplete first radial. Columnar facet small, round, or obscurely pentagonal. C- alternatus differs from C. acutus and trilobatus, McCay, in its greater length, and the rib ornamenting the second radials; also, by the much greater del- icacy, (judging from McCay’s figure,) of the ridge between the am- bulacre. This species is found much below either of the species of McCay. PALHUNTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 495 Geological position and locality. Found in earthy partings between chrystalline limestone, about eight feet below the hydraulic cement beds,* and below the Ohvanite horizon at the falls of the Ohio, and in the same geological position on south fork of Beargrass creek, Jeftfer- son county, Kentucky. Length of specimen, - - - - - 35% inch, Greatest diameter, - - - - - .3345 inch. For valuable hints and assistance our thanks are due to Dr. D. D. Owen; also, to Samuel Casseday, for the use of his cabinet of Crinoi- dea and Olivanites. SIDNEY 8S. LYON, g Assistant Geologist. *These rocks belong to the Devonian period. Explanations of the Plates. PLATE I. ASTEROCRINUS CORONARIUS. Lyon. Volume 3, page 476. Fie. 2. View of the summit. Fie. la. Basal view of same specimen, natural size. GRAPHIOCRINUS—14 BRACHIALIS. Lyon. Volume 3, page 479, Fie. 2. Generic figure, representing the parts laid out upon a horizontal surface. 1. Basal pieces. 2. First radial pieces. 3. Second radials. 4 Secondary radials. 5. Arms. 6. Anal pieces. Fia. 2a. Profile view, same specimen. Fig. 2b. Basal view, same specimen, natural size. 496 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. PLATE Lt. PENTREMITES OBESUS. Lyon. : Volume 3, page 469. Fie. 1. Basal view. Fic. 1a. View of the summit, same specimen. Fie. 1b. Profile view, same specimen. Fie. 1c. Basal pieces. : Fig. id. Fragment showing the interradial pieces, drawn the size of nature. Fie. le. Generic figure, reduced one diameter— j 1. Basal pieces. 2. First radial pieces. 3. second radial pieces. 4. Third radial pieces. 5. Interradial pieces. 6. Pseudambulacral fields. ". PLATE III. ASTEROCRINUS CAPITALIS. Lyon. Volume 3, page 472. Fie. 1. Profile view, (all the figures are the size of nature.) Fre. 1a. View of one of the club-like lobes, presenting its smallest surface. Fic. 1b. View of same part, presenting its greatest surface. Fre. Ic. View of the summit. Fra. 1d. Basal view. Fig. le. Generic figure— 1. Basal pieces. 2. Radial pieces. 2a. Anal piece. 3. Secondary radials. ° : Fie. 1f. End view of the base, anal side presented. Fie. 1g. External view of the base. Fie. 1h. Internal view of the base. Fie. li. End of the base, opposite the anal side. -Fre. 1k. End view of the base, showing the long diameter. PLATEH IV. ACTINOCRINUS ABNORMIS. yon. Volume 3, page 479. Fie. 1. Profile view, natural size. Fie. 1a. Basal view, same specimen. Fie. 1b. Generic view, extended from the anal pieces. to the knob at the center o the summit. Fie. Fie. Fie. 2b. Fic. Fie. Fia. Fie. Fie. Fie. Fie, Fie. Fig. Fre. Fie. Fia. Fra. 2. 2a. 3a. 8b. 3c. 3d. 3e. la. 1b. Ic. 1d. 2a. 2b. PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 497 DOLATOCRINUS LAOUS. Lyon. Volume 3, page 482. Generic figure. s Summit view. Basal view, same specimen, size of nature. ‘ VASOCRINUS VALENS. Lyon. Volume 3, page 485. Generic figure, size of nature, the pieces arranged around the columnar facet. Profile view, vasocrinus valens. Vasocrinus sculptus, from which the external sculpture has been removed, anel side front, natural size. VASOCRINUS SCULPTUS. Lyon. Volume 3, page 486. Profile view, natural size, different specimen. Basal view of same specimen. Summit view of same specimen, natural size. PLATE V. OLIVANITES VERNEUILII. Troost. Volume 3, page 487 ,488. Olivanites Verneuilii, natural size, anal side front. Olivanites Verneuilii, natural size, side opposite the anal side. Generic figure—1. Basal pieces (lighter colored.) 2. Primary radials, Ist series. 3. Primary radials, 2d series, (forked pieces.) 5. In- terradial pieces. 4. Pseudambulacral fields, and supporting pieces on either side. 41. Anal piece, with the large opening at the summit. 6. Small pieces at the summit. Summit view, natural size. Basal view, natural size. OLIVANITES ANGULARIS. Lyon. Volume 3, page 492. Olivanites Angularis, anal side front, natural size, from a large speci- men. Olivanites Angularis, summit view. Fia. 2. Olivanites Angularis, side opposite the anal side. 63 498 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. CODASTER ATTENNATUS. Lyon. Volume 3, page 403. Fie. 3. Generic figufe—1. Basal pieces. 2. Radial pieces, Ist series. 3. Ra- dial pieces, 2d series. 4. Angular pieces, on the summit, occupying a position in reference to the 2d radials, similar to the interradial pieces in Pentremites. Fie. 3a. Summit view, enlarged two diameters. Fia. 3b. Profile view, natural size. SIDNEY S. LYON. PALAZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF THE FOSSIL FLORA OF THE COAL MEASURES OF THE WESTERN KENTUCKY COAL FIELD: BY LEO LESQUEREUX, PALZONTOLOGIST. INTRODUCTORY LETTER. Dear Sir: I herewith submit my report on the identification of the veins of the Southwestern Coal Measures of Kentucky. Permit me first to most gratefully acknowledge the liberal and en- lighteded support that I received from you, to ensure the success of my researches. It is by following exactly your directions, that with the co-operation of Mr. E. T. Cox, your able assistant, we are able to point out now, for the first time, some general and reliable characters, which may prove of practical advantage for the identification of the richest beds of coal of Kentucky, and of the whole coal-fields of the United States. It was understood that I should only have to collect and examine the fossil plants of the Western Coal Fields of Kentucky, with essen- tial references to the peculiar species of each bed of coal. You want- ed thus to ascertain the practicability of establishing the order of su- perposition, and by this means, the identification of the beds. I had been engaged during two years, in following the same researches for the state survey of Pennsylvania, in the anthracite coal-fields of that state, and had obtained some interesting and practical results from the study of the fossil plants found in connection with the shales of each bed of coal. But as soon as we began our explorations, in the bituminous coal-fields of Kentucky, it became evident that the marine element was predominant in the shales of most of the beds, and that it would be of little advantage to limit our researches to the fossil botany only, since shells and remains of fishes were mostly found in the shales, without any plants whatever. For that reason, and confident that the general principles exposed hereafter, would prove reliable for the distribution of the shells, as well as of plants, I determined to carefully examine the marine remains of each bed, and to collect them for comparison and study. Mr. E. T. Cox, who is entitled to his share of the practical results of our explorations, being better acquainted with the shells than I am, took especial care of this part of our work, and by his unremitting researches, and arduous labor, we have been able to collect a large num- 502 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. ber of specimens, which have been subjected to your examination. From them it is evident that the distribution of the species of shells in the shales of a bed of coal is as reliable, for its identification, as the distribution of the species of fossil plants. The following introductory remarks may appear out of place in a local report like this, but I think that they are not without a practical. advantage. They will give not only an answer to a question scarcely understood as yet, and often put to us by persons interested in the coal business, viz: what is the coal, and how has this fuel been formed? But they will also enable the reader fully to understand the practical deductions, and to test their value. It is unnecessary to dwell on the advantages of undoubtedly ascer- taining the geological level of a bed of coal, since it is evident that profitable explorations for coal can be made, with some chances of success, only from the directions of a previously ascertained and well established geological level. When this is exactly ascertained, a sin- gle glance at a vertical section of the measures gives an answer to the question: at what distance above or below shall we expect to find another coal, and what will possibly be the thickness of the bed? The few quotations and references to researches previously made by myself, in the coal-fields of Pennsylvania and Ohio, will be easily excused, since they tend to solve the problem of the coeval formation, even of the primitive connection of all the coal-fields of the United States—a question most. interesting for geology, and eagerly discuss- ed just now. Andas for the right I may have to quote a few lines of a report delivered in 1854, to the director of the Geological State Sur- vey of Pennsylvania, and of which a small pamphlet, “ Description of new species of fossil plants, §*c.,” has only been published, I do not think that it can be denied me. This report, elaborated with great care, and the arduous labor of two years, was to appear in the final report of the Geological State Survey of Pennsylvania, but it is a question if it will ever be published. Therefore, I do not think that Jsam bound to entirely disregard some scientific results, which may be of general advantage, for the only reason that they have been made under the direction of another state. I am, sir, most respectfully, yours, LEO LESQUEREUX. Dr. D. D. Owen, Director of the Mote Survey of Kentucky. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. In tracing the features, and studying the rocks and compounds of the earth’s surface, no problem has more frequently occupied the mind of geologists than the formation of coal. Where does this black sub- stance come from, hard as stone, and nevertheless inflamable as wood; half bitumen, half charcoal, encased between beds of shale and rock, which, by their fossil remains, their fishes, shells, or plants, attest the highest antiquity? Has coal been originated in the bowels of the earth by some volcanic agency, and deposited in a fluid state, like the lavas or the primitive rocks of many mountains? No! for it is strat- ified, laminated, extended in horizontal beds, covering very large sur- faces with a nearly constant thickness. Moreover, the shales in which it is ordinarily incased bear evident proofs that they have been slowly deposited in a quiet water basin, and that subterranean fire has had no action upon them, except perhaps as a hardening agency. Or, perhaps, has coal been made of the remains of extensive forests, overthrown, transported, and deposited again in valleys and hollows, by an uni- versal flood. But, by such a cataclysm, those remains could not have been distributed in an harmonious manner, in extensive beds of equal thickness, and especially in such purity that they scarcely contain any particle of mud, sand, or any substance that does not belong to the chemical compounds of the wood. For the same reason, also, the beds of coal cannot be the result of heaps of drift-wood along the banks of the large rivers, or on the shores of the sea. It is then necessary to admit, with most of the best living geologists, that the coal beds have been formed nearly in the same manner as the peat-bogs of our own time, and that the coal itself is nothing else but decomposed and har- dened woody matter, remains of immense and successive forests, grown, decayed, heaped up, and then entombed on the spot, in their gigantic shrouds of black slate, of black, white, and grey limestones, or of yel- low sandstone. But such an explanation is too general, too indefinite, to be easily un- derstood, and especially to give a satisfactory account of the various 504 PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. accidents which have accompanied the formation of the coal. And since it is, from the nature of the shales of the coal-beds, and from the remains, whether plants or animals, found in connection with them, that the writer of this report intends taking the characters that may help to their identification, or to the ascertaining of their geological level, it is necessary to give, at least, the details that may be justly required, as reliable proofs of the validity of his opinion. The vegetable is cotemporary with the animal kingdom. Plants and animals have appeared at the same time on the earth, and grown to- gether in parallel lines—for the remains of marine plants or fucoides are found in the oldest stratified rocks, in connection with the petrified remains of shells. As soon asa part of the earth’s surface has been thrown out of the sea, like a new-born child, nature, its kind mother, has covered it with the green carpet of another vegetation. But the rise of a solid surface above the sea does not appear to have been a sud- den and paroxismal event. Impelled by the action of an internal fire, the crust of the earth, still thin and scarcely solid, was continually swelling here and there, witha variety of undulating movements— ascending and then subsiding at the same place—either propelled by the internal fire, or depressed by its own weight, when the force lost its energy. In this manner, ranges of hills began to appear, breaking the monotonous horizon of an universal ocean; and at their base, im- mense plains, leveled by the long protracted action of the waves, being by and by raised to the surface and separated from the sea by heavy banks of sand, were thus transformed into shallow marshes, prepared for another kind of vegetation. Such marshes though. of a far more lim- ited extent, are seen in our time along the shores, both of the Atlan- tic and of our great lakes, the Dismal and Alligator swamps of the south; the Sandusky, Montezuma, and Toledo marshes of the north. But before those immense plains were thus slowly elevated and sep- arated from the vast deep, the sea came for a long time, breaking its waves against the primitive hills, or at least, was long engaged in de- positing around their base the mud with which its waters were charged. Those gigantic deposits of red sandstone, bordering the coal basin on its eastern margins, are especially the work of the tides. Like the conglomerates which were afterwards deposited upon them, they thick- en to the east, and nearly disappear in the contrayy ¢i rection, evidently PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 505 showing where then were the first shores of the ocean—the first out- line of the Alleghany mountains perhaps. The conglomerates of the anthracite basins of Pennsylvania are about fifteen hundred feet high, composed of sand and pebbles of quartz, which are sometimes as large as hens’ eggs. On the contrary» in the western part of the Coal Measures, in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee, they are comparatively thin, and of a finer texture—just as it happens that near the shallow shores of our lakes, or of the Atlantic, the gravel and coarse materials of the bottom are heaped by the waves nearer to the margin, in proportion to their size, the finest particles of sand being necessarily drawn farther from the shores where the action of the waves is less violent. It was in this manner that the first basin of the coal was prepared. Bordered to the east by a chain of hills, the bottom was slowly upheaved, and the ocean damed far away to the west, began there, by its perpetual movements, to build again its new shores, and to close in the coal basin with high banks of sand and grav- el. This separation was necessary, for a shallow, quiet, water, of a constant level, is the first condition of the formation of peat, and con- sequently of coal. The plants of the bogs have a peculiar growth and a peculiar com- position. They live ordinarily half immersed in water, and raise their stems, branches, leaves, and flowers above the surface. They are gen- erally of a woody texture. Even the mosses and the grasses of a peat-bog contain, comparatively to their size, as much woody fibre as the hardest oak. The trees are most of them resinous. In the north- ero part of the United States the balsam-fir, the black and white spruce, the tamarack, the arbor-vitee and the white cedar; in the south, the bald cypress, the great and small laurel magnolias, the tulip-tree, are commonly seen growing on the cedar swamps, with birches, alders, poplars, and other resinous shrubs. The peat bogs of Europe are abundantly covered with a kind of dwarf-pine, from the leaves and twigs of which the rosin trickles upon the mossy ground, forming all around the trees a hard floor of tar many inches in thickness. Most of the plants of those marshes, except a few trees, belong to that pe- culiar station; they do not grow out of their bogs, neither can they be transported and cultivated out of them. For that reason the vege- tation of the cedar swamps cannot be taken as a true representative of 4 506 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. the flora of a whole country. It has its place in the harmony of na- ture, like the fruits and flowers of our gardens, the grass of the prairie, the trees of the forest. It was destined for the condensation, the pre- servation of carbon, for the formation of coal. For truly, when we examine fossil plants that have been preserved in the shales of the coal, or when we analyze the substance of the coal itself, we find that the plants which formed it have the greatest likeness to those of our actual peat-bogs, viz: the ferns, the club-mosses, the horse-tails, the rushes, the reeds, and especially the resinous trees. The most remarka- ble difference is that all these plants, compared with those of our time, were of a monstrous size. They were, indeed, the mastodons, the mammoths, of the vegetable world. Every body is now acquainted with Liebig’s explanation of the com- bustion and decomposition of wood. When heat is applied to it, it burns with flame, developing carburetted hydrogen. When woody fibre is brought into contact with air, ina moist condition, it is gradual- ly decayed, viz: changed into mould or humus, by the conversion of the oxygen of the air into the same volume. of carbonic acid. Its carbon is then not only preserved, but augmented. When the access of air is restrained, decay, or a slow burning of the wood, is in like manner produced, but the process is different. The disengagement of carbonic acid, though continuous, is slight, and the final result is charcoal, wood-coal, lignite, mineral-coal, anthracite, even diamond, according to the conditions under which this slow burning has taken place—the quantity of water, the more or less free access of the oxy- gen of the air, compression, heat, &. Says Liebig: “A slow but con- tinual removal of oxygen in the form of carbonic acid, from layers of wood-coal, or of wood immersed and decomposing in water, transforms necessarily the woody substance into mineral coal. On the contrary, the removal of all the hydrogen of mineral coal, converts it into an- thracite.’ From this we draw the conclusion, that for the formation of coal, a large production of woody fibre, at a constant water level, is a necessary condition. The presence of the water, and its constant level, are necessary not only to preventa too rapid decomposition of the wood, but also for the vegetation, itself, of the marshes. Plants living entirely immersed in water, do not have a larger proportion of woody fibre in their tissues. PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 507 The fucoides, or marine weeds, are of this kind. To elaborate wood, the plant wants the contact of the air with the porous surface of its leaves. The marsh plants, then, having their roots fixed in the ground below water, expand their leaves either on the surface of the water or above it. Trees need, for their vegetation, the absorption of air through their roots. Hence, those which grow on the bogs, extend their roots and rootlets in a large circuit, let them run near the surface among the mosses, and ordinarily plant themselves on a higher level, either on the decayed trunks of other trees, or on some heap of mat- ter. In any case, a formation of peat is impossible in a marine basin not entirely secured against the action of the tides, or in the marshes of rivers, which, though covered with high water in the spring, become dried by the heat of the summer months. Along the shores of the ocean, of our lakes or our large rivers, there are extensive marshes, inaccessible during the spring, and even during part of the summer, covered with rushes and reeds, the bottom of which is constantly and slowly elevated by thin layers of mud or clay, but never covered with peat. The same phenomenon is produced in lakes and bayous, where water is too high for the growth of the plants, and on the borders of which the water level is not constant. The matter deposited at the bottom of those deep marshes is constantly a fine mud. There is perhaps no place in the world where the process of the for- mation of coal may be studied, with better chances of a clear elucida- tion of all its phenomena, than in the Dismal and Alligator swamps of southern Virginia and North Carolina. The extent, though truly nothing compared with the area of the coal-fields of America, covers, nevertheless, thousands of square miles. They are separated from the bays and sounds that surrounds them by broad hills, and large banks of sand, bordering the Atlantic, in a continuous row, from Cape Henry, or Norfolk in Virginia, to the mouth of Cape Fear river, or Wilmington in North Carolina. They contain, in their wide area, sand hills, deep deposits of peat, and lakes. The hills are covered with the vegetation of dry land. The peat, from one to fifteen feet thick, follows at its bottom the irregularities of the surface on which it rests, thinning and disappearing entirely where it abuts against the hills: for a bed of peat, depending for its formation on the level of the water, 508 PALEHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. has just the seme appearance, or at least, by a cross-section, would rresent the same front as the transverse soundings of a shallow sheet of water. Fig, L *Fig. 1. Approximate seclion across the Dismal Swamp--a. Deposits of peat. a’. Depo- sits of trees at the bottom of Drummond’s lake. 6. Surface of lake Drummond. ec. White clay of the bottom. d. Hills of sand. e. Sand below the marshes. . As for the vegetation itself, and its action on the formation of the peat, let any tourist try to find his way directly across the swamp, from some point on the canal to Drummond’s lake and he will understand at once all about the mystery of the heaping of vegetable matter. Wading at least knee deep in water, or in a black soft mud, or sinking at every step deeper and deeper in the hillocks of green mosses, where he thought to find a dry and solid footing for a minute’s rest, he has literally to cut a path through a wall of canes, of reeds, and of shrubs. The only place-where he finds firm stepping and a clear space, is on the roots of the bald cypress, which raise themselves above the water around each tree, like the scalped skulls of a tribe of Indians; or, perhaps, on the prostrated trunk ofa huge magnolia tree, covered with mosses, and slowly sinking in its muddy grave, not to decay, but to be embalmed and preserved like an Egyptian mummy. Every year the mingled mass of vegetation, the mosses, the canes, the reeds, the trunks, branches and leaves of the trees and shrubs, are heaped and deposited on the surface of the bog, to be, by and by, transformed into combustible matter, by the process of slow decomposition. Some of the lakes now open on the surface of the marshes have cer- tainly been hidden, formerly, by a thick coat of vegetation. Dram- mond’s lake is only fifteen feet deep, and its bottom is strewn with the remains of an overthrown forest, which has probably sunk by its own weight. Phenomena like this are frequent in the large peat-bogs of northern Europe, especially in Sweden, Denmark—even in the mountains of Switzerland. The green carpet of vegetation which, by *The figure is drawn without reference to any exact proportions ; in depth it represents about one foot in the 8th part of an inch; in length one inch would represent more than two miles. PALMIONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 509 the agency of floating mosses, spreads on such lakes, is sometimes so thin that it breaks under a light pressure, and men and animals are frequently engulfed and irretrievably lost in their treacherous waters. The rich cabinets of Lund and Copenhagen are filled with antiquities collected in the peat-bogs of that country—weapons and armor; ornaments of copper, silver and gold; tools and instruments of every description; bones and skulls of extinct or living races of animals; of men also; even the whole skeleton of a woman, with her clothes, have been found imbedded in the peat. Drummond’s lake has now been open for many hundred years; its black water has entombed its sunken forest under a bed of mud. The surface of the lake, like the general surface of the Dismal swamp, is only 164 feet above mid-tide of the Atlantic. If we suppose a slow depression of all the space covered by the Alligator and Dismal swamps, of say only a few feet in a hundred years, what would be the result? At first the water rises above its former level, since its ontlets are ne- cessarily obstructed, and the remains of the plants still growing here and there upon the hillocks of the marsh, fall every year into the wa- ter and sink to the bottom—not to add any more matter to the bed of the peat, but to be incorporated with the soft mud continually deposi- ted by the water. If the downward movement continues, every trace of vegetation must disappear, and the marsh forms an extensive lake, connected by some outlet with the sea, which brings to it a few species of its inhabitants, either fishes or molluscs; and, by and by, after a still lower depression, either the sea spreads quietly over the whole space, and its water covers it with a deposit of limestone, wherein are imbedded the remains of the shells and animals of the deep; or, per- haps, after a sudden cataclysm, there is a depression of a few feet, and the sea, overcoming its barriers, rushes into its old level, sweeps over its old bed with impetuosity, and brings with its waves the banks of sand and the gravel of its shores, to scatter them more or less irregularly over the whole surface. Let the land rise and the water recede again, and the formation may be repeated many times, with many modifica- tions. This simple work of nature, operating in this wise for an im- mense number of centuries, will necessarily result in the transforma- tion of the whole stratum to true Coal Measures. The compressed and crystallized peat will be the coal; the soft mud slowly deposited 610 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. upon it by quiet and shallow waters, will be hardened to black shales, and show us the petrified remains of plants, shells, or fishes. The de- posits of the deep, quiet, marine waters, have formed a bed of lime- stone above it, and if, afterwards, sand has been brought in by the cur- rents of the sea, the whole measures—coal, shales and limestone— become covered with sandstone. The only thing not explained above, is the formation of the fire-clay of the bottom, which, by a cross-section, would certainly be found un- der the coal of the Dismal Swamp, as it is found under nearly every bed of the old Coal Measures. As we have seen before, the woody matter deposited in a basin can only be preserved and transformed, if the water is of a constant level. Resting on the sand, the water percolates through it, and consequently. is subject, by a constant motion, to a perpetual change of chemical con- stituents, and to a renewal of the particles of air which it contains. This change is opposed to the formation of peat, since water, before being prepared for the preservation and transformation of woody sub- stance, has to become saturated with a peculiar acid—the ulmic acid—_ produced by the decomposition of wood itself, Thence it follows, that a peat or coal basin has to be separated and prepared to keep its water, like a well cemented cistern. This work is done by very small animals —infusoria—and by peculiar species of plants. In the peat forma- tions of the present day the clay bottom of the bogs is prepared by fresh water molluscs and infusoria, and by the vegetation of the char- ace and confervee, two families of cryptogamous plants, which disap- pear entirely, as soon as the peaty vegetation begins. They fix in their shells, or in their tissue, the carbonate of lime or the silica, abundantly dissolved in some water, and by their decomposition they deposit those substances at the bottom of the water in the form of a very fine mud. In Denmark, there are some perfectly isolated ponds, where this soft mud or clay is formed, by the agency of the above named animals and plants, at the rate of one foot and more in every five years. As there is no bed of peat, but is underlaid by soft white clay, so there is no bed of mineral coal without its bottom of fire-clay, except when it has been deprived of it by some accidental circumstance. This fire-clay is free from remains of animals and shells, but it contains very abundantly the-stems and leaves of a species of plant, Stigmaria fien- PALEUNTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 511 des, (plate 7, fig. 2,) which undoubtedly, like the Chara and the Horsetail of our time, has especially contributed to fix the silica, and to precipitate it to the bottom with its remains. In this abridged exposition we cannot discuss the value of any of the above made assertions. -Nevertheless, not one of them has been admitted without a critical examination, and after its trnth has been ascertained by serious researches, or by reliable authorities. The formation of the coal being thus understood in its whole, it is easy to draw from it the explanation of the different modifications of the Coal Measures, and to deduce some general rules for the identifica- tion of the veins. Ist. THE FIRE-CLAY. This clay, ordinarily full of rootlets and stems of stigmaria, so gen- erally underlays every bed of coal, and its general appearance and chemical elements are so much the same, that except, perhaps, for its general thickness, it cannot become a very reliable guide for the iden- tification of the beds. Even its thickness is variable. It depends on the depth of the basin in which it is formed, and on the regularity of its bottom—thickening in the hollows, and sometimes entirely disappear- ing near the margins of the basin. Variously tinctured by more or _less of oxide of iron, it is generally whitish, but sometimes as red as ochre, and even variegated like marble, in the same bed. The quan- tity of stgmaria found in it is as variable as its color, and as for its chemical elements they depend, like the color, on the mixture of iron and lime, especially silica and alumina, which are never uniformly dis- tributed in a wide expanse of shallow water. This fire-clay of the Coal Measures appears sometimes alone, and without any bed of coal above it. In which case it may be intermixed with layers of shales, covered with the remains of plants, especially of ferns. Then it indicates only the place which was prepared for the vegetation of a bed of coal. Some accident—the shallowness of the water perhaps, or some dis- turbance of its level—has prevented the growth and accumulation of vegetable matter in sufficient abundance to form the coal. But the plants, growing upon the marsh, have been imbedded and preserved in the shales above the fire-clay as testimony to its natural destination. Nevertheless, those isolated beds of fire-clay, overlaid by plants, are not always barren of coal, and by following them to some distance the coal 512 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. is often found somewhere reposing on their surface. The fire-clay is generally a reliable guide for the identification of veins, when it sepa- rates two beds of coal, forming what is generally called a clay parting. In this case, it is ordinarily found, though of variable thickness, over a wide extent. But it is then formed like the shales; in some cases, it is even a true shale, and itis in the examination of the shales that the reason of its formation, and of its appearance, ought to be looked for. Qup. THE COAL. There is no substance of which so many chemical analyses have been made, and none, also, of which the chemical elements are so well known. ‘The general result of all these analyses has proved a curious fact, viz: that two pieces of coal, taken from the same bed, at only a few feet distance, have scarcely ever presented exactly the same propor- tions in the quantity of their essential compounds. The reason of this is easily understood: each plant, especially each kind of tree, has for its wood a peculiar composition; each one is more or less resinous, hard or porous, has more or less of woody matter in an equal volume, and each plant has a peculiar acid; all the essential elements are locally preserved in the coal. The same remark is true of beds of peat, of which two slices cut either horizontally or vertically, ata distance of one or two feet from _ each other, never present exactly the same appearance, nor exhibit ex- actly the same proportion in their chemical elements. Some plants of the coal—the Calamites and the Stigmaria especially, fix in their tissue the silica of the water, and the quantity of ash varies in proportion to their abundance in the coal. Some others are porous, and when lying on the surface of « bed of coal, they let particles of mud percolate through, or within their tissue, and produce the same result in another way, and at. another place. From these different causes, the ashes of the coal havea different color, and the distinction of white ash and red ash coal, which may be of great moment in the identification of the beds of part of a basin, is, when considered in a general point of view, of little value. If we may rely on the sections of the anthracite basins of Pennsylvania as they are generally given, the upper beds of it belong to the red, the intermediate ones to the grey, and the lower ones to the white ash se- ries. In the corl-fields of western Kentucky and of Illinois, the upper beds of coal are white ash, the middle ones red, and the lower PAL-BONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 513 grey or reddish.* The classification of the colors could not be more completely reversed. This color of the ashes is probably, also, in immediate connection with the nature of the vegetation which has formed the coal. In the peat formations the matter formed by the heaping and decomposition of trees gives white ash; a compound of small herbaceous plants, ferns, rushes, canes, mosses, gives red ash; anda mixture of both forms the grey color of the ashes of some beds. The external appearance of the coal is as much varied as its chemi- cal elements. The trees, sometimes, when they are very resinous, have formed, by their decomposition, such a compact and homogeneous mass, that the coal receives a peculiar appearance; it is then known by the name of cannel coal. Another species of wood preserves, even in the coal, some trace of its primitive texture, and shows, in its fracture, a peculiar reflection of light, called, by the miners, the birds eye. The coal is mostly stratified in thin laminz or coats, alternately shining and dull—an appearance which clearly indicates an annual de- posit of decayed vegetable matter, and the action of the water on it, during the winter time, or before the beginning of a new vegetation. The stratification of peat is exactly the same as that of coal; but the layers are variable in thickness, from the sixth of an inch to one inch and more, becoming natuarally thinner under a great compression, and nearer to the bottom of the beds. The laminated appearance of coal is already a proof against the of- ten repeated opinion, that it has been formed by the overthrow of vast forests; but there isa more conclusive argument against it. One acre of ground, covered with dense forest, and when its yield is care- fully estimated, would afford, in 120 years, 10,450 cubic feet of wood; supposing the growth of peat to be only one foot in the same number of years, one acre of bog would produce 19,660 cubic feet of peat, (measured dry, and ready for burning.) A thick forest, overthrown by acataclysm, and buried in the sand, would scarcely make three inches of coal. But some peat-bogs of Ireland, Germany and Switzer- land, which have continuous beds of peat twelve to fifteen feet thick, *Table of analyses of coal from saline and other localities, in the Geological report of sa- line eoal mines and Manufacturing Co. p. 60, by D. D. Owen, Cineinnati, 1855. 65 5l4 PALZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. would, if they were transformed into coal, produce three to five feet of hard mineral coal. For a better understanding of the different features and various ap- pearances of coal, it is necessary to remember that the woody substance in its decomposition or slow burning, and before arriving at its harden- ed state of mineral coal, is ordinarily subjected to a softening process. The low part ofa bed of peat is, in most cases, a black paste. In the old lignite deposits of Germany, large trunks of trees, perfectly black- ened, are heaped and flattened into beds of six feet to nine feet thick, and their woody substance has become so soft that the workmen can easily cut it with their shovels; hence the flattening of all the stems in the coal and the shales; the remarkable appearance of im- mense pieces of bark rolled and pressed together, like sheets of paper; hence, again, the compactness of some coals; the evident stratification or lamination of others; the remarkable action of the sulphuret of iron, in transforming into pyrites whole flattened stems, or in preserv- ing in the cannel coal of Breckinridge the outlines of the stigmaria, and of their leaves, with such neatness that they look asif they had been painted in yellow, on aground of black. The thickness of a coal bed, notwithstanding contrary assertions, is scaicely a reliable guide for identification; though as it has been pre- viously explained, the coal is formed on a continuous surface, and not deposited here and there in hollows of various extent, depth, and di- rections—for this thickness depends on the evenness of the bottom upon which it rests. When a bottom of sand, or of any other loose substance whatever, has been for a long time covered by a deep sea, it is mostly even and unbroken; a bed of coal formed upon it is gener- ally of continous and of equal thickness. But when two beds of coal are only separated by a thin formation of sandstone, and consequently have been formed at a short interval from each other, the sandstone covering the lower bed often bears, on its surface, numerous wrinkles and furrows, as an evidence of the action of turbulent waters. In this case, the coal formed gbove it is only piecemeal, in separate layers, thick in places, then rapidly thinning until it disappears, to be again found at a distance of a medium thickness, and continue for a while. PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 515 3xv. THE SHALES OR ROOF SLATES. The shales are mostly a compound of the finest particles of matter, deposited in such a way that they are generally laminated in thin sheets, probably a result of periodical influences. If the movement of depression, marked by the formation of the shales, has been as slow as all the appearances lead us to believe it, the water raised above the marshes, was at first nearly of the same depth, and covered the whole field. Ifwe suppose that some essential elements of this water had the power of consolidating themselves, and of imbedding and preserving all the low plants and the leaves falling on the marshes from the trees; if we suppose further, that by breaking the hardened mould, we could still now find the remains of those plants perfectly well preserved in the stones, we cannot but admit that those prints of plants would give us a pretty exact idea of the vegetation of the marshes of the coal epoch. It is just what has happened. Whenever, during the formation of the shales, the movement of depression has been so slow that for a length of time the marine water has not invaded the marshes, the de- posited shales contain remains of plants only; but when the depres- sion has been somewhat more rapid, the deeper water has arrested the vegetation, and the scantily preserved remains of plants are old, much broken, mostly stems, fruits, and pieces of bark of a hard texture, mixed with some shells. The presence of the shells in the shales, proves the access of the marine water; it is ordinarily accompanied with some fucoid plants and fishes. The fucoid plants are generally scarce in the coal slates, and the shells, though often represented by an immense number of individuals, are limited to a few species, which differ from those of the limestone, and seem to be of the kind generally living in the contact of the tides with the fresh water of the lakes or rivers. The slow propa- gation of those species lead us to suppose that they were distributed ona vast area, upon the beds where their remains are found. There- fore, if we can admit, that after the formation of each bed of coal, either the plants, or the animals that lived inthe water which covered them, were of peculiar species, or at least that some species of plants or shells have either appeared for the first time in each bed of shale, or that identical species have been distributed in each of them in a different proportion, it is evident that the examination of the top or roof shales of the coal, and the study of their remains, whether plants 516 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. or shells, must give the most reliable character for the identification of the beds of coal. There is no doubt, but after the formation of each bed of coal all the plants, and the animals belonging to it, have been destroyed, or at least removed far away. The vegetation of the marshes has been cov- ered by thick bed of shales; the shales themselves, with their own in- habitants, have been again covered either by marine deposits of lime- stone, showing the remains of other peculiar species of organized be- ings, or by sandstone swept in by the high sea, and entirely destitute of animal remains. But even, when a bed of coal has again been formed over the marine shales, without any intermediate stratum, the formation of the fire-clay and the vegetation of the coal, both entirely barren of marine animals, both indicate a condition of things and a lapse of time which would, in all probability, have destroyed even their germs. If then, after the formation of a new bed of coal, and after an immense number of years, the downward movement of the surface brings again over it, the marine water and its inhabitants, is it rational to expect that this water will be still charged with the same species of animals as before, and that those animals will be distributed in the same proportion? Is it even rational to suppose, that all the cir- cumstances producing the overflowing will be the same, with the same proportion in the quantity of marine water, the same chemical ele- ments, the same depth, the same temperature, &c., &c. If there is on- ly a small change of the elements dissolved in the water, (and truly, all the shales at different levels present different appearances,) it is cer- tain that this change ought to have influenced the life, viz: the distri- bution of animals in the shales. . It is even so with the plants. The surface of a marsh having been overflowed, and its vegetation destroyed, we cannot but admit that if it begins again in a new sheet of water, and after a number of centuries, the distribution of this new vegetation will be somewhat different from the former. If there are no new species of plants, and certainly there ought to be some, at least some of the former plants have entirely disappeared and those which have been left are grouped in another proportion. Nature bears in one hand its scythe of death, and in the other its cup of life. At every geological change that closes the career of some living species, there appear some others, that were prepared for existence and begin their mission. And although PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 517 human life is limited toa day, in comparison with the innumerable ages of our world, we can sometimes observe those changes, and even analyze their causes. In the peat bogs of some high valleys of Switz- erland, the bottom of the marshes is strewn with large trunks of oaks, and there the climate is so cold now, that the pines alone can grow. In Denmark this change of vegetation is also remarkably observed in deep bogs, which the proprietors find profitable to dry with hydraulic machines for the timber which they exhume. One of the most remark- of them has been explored and described, more than ten years ago, by the writer of this report* as its bottom, over the fire-clay, was first found four or five feet of very black peat, overlaid by a forest of pines, lying in the direction of the dip of the basin, viz: their roots against the sides. The diameter of many of their trunks was about one foot. Over the pines a bed of black peat, five to six feet thick, was still cov- ered by an overthrown forest of white birch trees. A new bed of peat, six to eight feet thick, had buried it under its formation, and was over- laid by a third forest of oaks, of which the trunks, three to four feet in diameter, were so well preserved that they were sawed on the place and used for timber. Over this lay five to six feet more of peat, and the whole deposite was covered with humus, and a living forest of beach trees. The whole formation measured about thirty feet. Along the shores of the Ohio and Mississippi river there has been deposited here and there, in different places, a quaternary formation re- markable for its thickness. Near Columbus, Kentucky, it elevates its white banks 160 feet above the level of the Mississippi river. In its upper bed—a fine silicious loam—there is an abundance of shells, which, except one species, are still found living in the river below. This single species, either entirely disappeared or transported to some distant region, is sufficient to prove that if a new bed of loam was de- posited now above the one mentioned, a close observer would already find a difference in their fossils. The lower bed of this quaternary de- posit contains a quantity of leaves, already carbonized, the outlines of which are perfectly well preserved in the hardened white clay. Among them, the predominant species is an oak, (quercus virens), which, in our times, has its peculiar station along the shores of the ocean, and i co in the north of Europe, for the study of the coal formations. (Neuchatel, -) +Firet report on the Geological Survey of Kentucky. 618 PALAHONTOLOGIOAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. scarcely grows out of the reach of marine water. There is in those re- mains of fossil plants very few of the species now living along the Mississippi and the Ohio rivers. A new deposit of leaves, now, would show a great difference between the vegetation of this last with the for- mer one. Such difference in the recent formations may be observed in many places. From this it seems rational to admit, that two beds of coal, separated by various and sometimes thick strata of another nature, ought to present certain differences, in the remains preserved in their shale—some peculiar character which may enable a palzeontolo- gist to identify each of them, or to know their geological level at eve- ry place where it is possible to see them open for a careful examina- tion. Though the exposition of those principles is new, the best living geologists—Lyell, Brongnart, Burat, &c. &e—have acknowledged their truth. For they have admitted that the paleontology of the shales would in time direct the identification of each bed of coal. M. de Humboldt, himself, says in his Cosmos: “That where several series of coal strata lie over one another, the genera and specie’ of plants are nct generally mixed, but arranged ina peculiar order for each bed.” The roof shales are subjected to some variation like the other for- mation, but they are rarely liable to modifications that can prevent their identification. Their thickness varies according to the depth of the water in which they are found. This depth of water, as we have before stated, would be nearly the same through the whole extent of a coal basin, if there had not happened some local depressions, caused either by volcanic commotions or by peculiar sinkings of the floating mass of vegetation. Those local depressions have caused the separa- tion of a bed of coal into two or more branches, and sometimes its en- tire disappearance among high banks of black shales. Such cases are not very rare. Then the shales, though thick, being of the same age, and their inhabitants not having been subjected to any destructive change, they preserve identity in their fossil remains. A short depression, or perhaps an accidental inundation of short du- ration, makes upon marshes the beginning of a formation of shales, which, if itis soon stopped by a new vegetation, produces in the bed of coal a separation or a clay parting. As these partings are formed upon the surface of a vegetable stratum, they ought to be generally PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 519 ona large scale, and follow the same rules as the shales. They may also thicken, or entirely disappear, or accidentally separate into two or three branches. The shales may be wanting, either from erosion, or from the uphea- val of a part of the surface above the water, or from the more active growth of the vegetable matter in a peculiar spot. The two last caus- es are scarcely observed: the first and more frequent one shall be mentioned again with the sandstone. Generally speaking, the absence of the shales is local, and ordinarily, even where they seem to be en- tirely wanting, if the mine be worked to any extent, they are discov- ered in some places. 4ru. THE LIMESTONE. This formation can be regarded as a continuance, and sometimes as an equivalent, of the shales, since it is established only in an undis- turbed sheet of deep marine water, by the continuous labor of marine animals, especially moluscs, and by the decomposition and accumula- tion of their remains. The essential reason of its formation, viz: deep, quiet, marine water, is nevertheless a cause of great variety— not in its chemical elements, perhaps, but in its persistency, its thick- ness, and its general distribution. It is often found in the Coal Meas- ures in an unfinished state, in irregular masses, which can scarcely take the name of beds, so limited are they. For this reason the lime- stone, by its presence above a bed of coal, is scarcely a reliable guide for identification. As long as the shales of the coal were deposited in low water, the influence of the sea, especially its currents, were scarcely appreciable. But in the limestone formation itis very visible indeed. The unequal distribution of the matter, and especially the remarkable erosions of the beds or isolated masses of it, are due to slow currents. The limestone of the westerg coal-fields of America, contain a great amount of organic remains, plants, shells, or fishes. But the plants cannot give a reliable criterion for the geological level of each peculiar strata, since all the remains found till now are only broken, deformed, and undeterminable parts of stems, with few marine fucoids. The re- mains of shells and fishes would probably afford some reliable data for tracing the geological level of the beds of limestone. They are only too numerous in their species, and have neyer been subjected to a 520 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. careful study. The animals of the limestone belong, evidently, to the sea, and are brought in with it. In a change of level they are des- troyed as individuals, not as species. Nevertheless, after a length of time, a new invasion of the sea ought to bring with it, upon the coal- fields, other species, since its neighboring sea and its inhabitants ought to have been subjected to changes. . Thick beds of limestone, interposed in many places between beds of coal and shales, offer the most certain indications of the slowness of the oscillations in the level of the coal-fields at the time of their for- mation. Not only the great number of species—the myriads of ani- mals of which the remains have been literally heaped together—but the introduction of madrepores, and their constructions, marked in the limestone strata, call for an inconceivable length of time. Sra. THE SANDSTONE. Tn its general appearance, thickness, and composition, this formation is the most unreliable of all. A substance, of which the elements have been transported and intermixed by currents, can never be an homogeneous one, especially when these currents are abnormal, the re- sult of a cataclysm, and have exercised their action over a very extend- ed surface, following numerous diversified phenomena. The move- ments of the waters, which have brought and deposited the sand, are made appreciable not only by the nature of the strata, but by traces of remarkable erosions. In some places the immediate contact of the sandstone with the coal cannot be explained but by an erosion of the beds of shales and limestones which were extended upon it. Even the coal has been sometimes swept away, then bruised, and deposited again with the sand by the energetic action of those turbulent waters. Beds of hard sandstone are so blackened by the broken fragments of coal and plants, with which they are intermixed, that they cannot be used for building purposes. No wonder that such mighty currents have dragged with them, and buried under heaps of sand, large trunks of trees, torn from the dry land of the shores, or from the forests of the marshes; or that they sometimes entombed in their ponderous deposits parts of forests, which are still now found standing and petrified like the pillars of some old Babylon of trees. From this we may conclude, that the remains of vegetation found in the beds of sandstone cannot show, generally speaking, their geologi- PALAAUNTOLOGIUAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 521 cal level. Beds of sandstone appear, particularly marked with the remains of broken plants. It may be that by a mighty cataclysm, immense marshes, covered with trees, have been entirely swept over, and that their remains, bruised and ground by a prolonged action of the waves, have eventually been carried and deposited over the whole area of the basin. It may be, also, that the large trunks, either standing or heaped up together, in some parts of the coal-fields, where they are found now in great abundance, bear evidence of a general and remarka- ble cataclysm; and that they may thus indicate a constant geological lev- el in their position. Some incomplete observations tend to confirm this supposition, but they are still too scanty, and need to be pursued over a wide area. ; It is scarcely necessary to explain why, in the bedsof sandstone, the trunks of trees are mostly petrified, preserving their general out- line, and not flattened as in the coal. Not only the sand is too porous a matter to prevent entirely the access of the air, but its mineral ele- ments have exerted a constant action on the woody matter, and des- troyed it entirely, or taken its place, leaving only its outline carved like a mould in the stone. Or they have transformed it to some stony substance—either silex or carbonate of lime and spar—preserv- ing thus partially, not only the external features, but even the internal structure of the wood, to the most delicate fibres and vessels. It has been asked many times, why, since the sandstone is a ‘narine formation, it does not contain any shells, any remains of marine ani- mals? Indeed, this question would be unanswerable if we were to suppose that the materials carried by the sea had formed its bottom. This supposition is not inadmissible. — Though the depression of an im, mense plain near the sea shores would take it below the leyel of the water, it could not raise the bottom of the sea, and spread its sand over it. But every one knows that the sea shores are every where bordered by hills of sand, sometimes several hundred feet high, and extening many miles, like huge inland wayes. Near the mouth of the Elbe and of the Rhine, those hills penetrate the country for hun- dreds of miles. The sand of which they are composed—coarse or fine—is sometimes mixed with gravel, but contains no shells or aniz mal remains. Such sand hills have probably furnished the materials for the sandstones of the Coal Measures; at least this is to me the only satisfactory explanation of their formation and composition. 66 522, PALEHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. The other rocks of the Coal Measures, like the deposits of iron, under their different forms and compounds, are purely local, and have no relation to our subject, viz: the identification of coal veins by pa- leontology. The discussion of their formation and distribution would be out of place here. To conclude these preliminary remarks, we need only expose, in a few words, the general rules which are drawn from them: Ist. The black shales, immediately resting upon a bed of coal, viz: the roof shales, furnish, by their remains of fossil plants, shells, and fishes, the most reliable indications for the identification of their ge- ological level. = 2d. The remains of plants give for this the best characters, since the vegetation of the coal beds was more generally and uniformly distri- buted on large surfaces, and since the plants, by their progressive modi- — fications, are subject to atmospherical influence, and also to the chem- ical changes of the water. 3d. The geological distribution of the plants or shells cannot be modified in a sudden and striking manner at each change of level. Therefore, the presence or absence of a species in the shales may be accidental, and cannot be a conclusive evidence of a change of level, except aftera long and careful examination over a wide area. The grouping of fossil species in the shales and its variations, afford a more reliable indication than the presence or absence of a single species. This sufficiently shows the difficulty of the work of identification, in a country where a small number of beds of coal have been opened and worked, and where paleeontological researches have been scarcely begun; in fact, this report is only the introduction to an important work, which ought to be pursued with interest by every true geologist, for the history and perfect acquaintance, not only of the coal fields in their general features, but of every bed of coal in particular. But it must be said, that a collection of specimens, made only for the beauty and the great number of specimens for show, is of little use. It ought to be made with a careful record of the place, and, if possible, of the true geological level in which the fossil remains are found. And thus it may, by and by, help to solve some of the most interesting problems of the formation of the coal, viz: Is there any true marine formation of the coal? From long explo- rations pursued in Europe and in America, the writer says, contrary to PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. §23 many assertions, that there does not exist a bed of true marine peat, viz: peat formed entirely of fucoides and marine plants; and that he has never seen a piece of coal with evident marks of marine origin. Have all our American coal-fields been formed in a continuous basin, or is there any local one with an appreciable difference in the flora and fauna of the shales ? Is there any trace of a permanent current of fresh water, of some river having flowed either through the coal-fields during some time of their formation, or in their vicinity ? Were the coal-fields the first land surface protruded like an island from the sea, or were they true marshes, low shores of a continent, of which the outlines had been already elevated above the ocean ? These are not the only questions that are to be answered. Beside the mere practical advantage to be derived from the paleeontology of coal, there is the nature of the vegetation, its relation to the atmos- pherical phenomena of the epoch, its comparison with the flora of our peat formations, and also with the coal flora of other continents, and many other subjects, which open up to the geologist a most inter- esting field for the exercise of the mind. 524 PALH/ONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Horizontal exposition of the different coal beds examined in the western coal Jield of Kentucky. 2 nts Hit CoaL Airdrie 2 3 (Near Curds | Pigeon No. 12. |ft.8in. rash) A. ‘Town’s| ville, Gin.| McNary’s| Peaks of | Run, 2 ft. 1.4 coal. | rash coal,| rasheoal. | 4 ft. rash | Otter, 4 ft.| rash coal. eo = coal rash coal. Coan Pesenes] ane eee REESE) ee] Sue AR No. Li. Airdrie |A.Town’s| Near : B. Sisk, 6 Provi- 6 ft. coal. | 6 ft. coal. |Curdaville,| McNary’s feet. Pigeon |dence, 6 ft. 4 ft. coal. | 7 ft. coal. Run, 8 ft. CoaL 3 No. 10. Seen only at Shawnee|town. emcees: || Lorene en a crt a a Ay 2 See -| Coan ee ’ Captain No. 9. Airdrie |A ‘Town’s McNary’s| Gamblin, | Jaketield, | Wings, 2 ft. 416 feet. 5 feet. 4\é feet. | 414 feet. | 444 feet. Coan No. 8. Not| seen. Coan > d No. 7. A. Vown’s black band coal. Coa No. 6 CoaL No. 5. Not} seen. Coa No. 4. Not] seen. Coan No. 3. Coat, No. 2. on é (es - Coa ; Ee No. 16. | Bell 5ft. | Cook 5 ft. |Casey 4 ft.| Ola distil- Union Co.,] Hawes. | Breckin- lery 3 ft? | 3 feet. | ville, 4 ft. |ridge, 3 ft. PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 625 Horizontal exposition of the different coal beds examined in the western coal field of Kentucky. Coan No. 12 bd red Se seal ode eet |e a AS Coan fesecscrid ea [525] Ge | Curlew, | Mulford, No. 11. | Watson’s,| Thompson] Raa Miller’s, |Bonharbor, 3 ft. 3 ft. 6 feet. 6 ft. Arnold’s, 6 ft. 5 ft. 8 ft. Coan No. 10 Ex. 22] Coan 4 | Hartford, pa No. 9. Isaac 2 ft. Lewisp ort, |Henderson, Curlew, | Multord, - |Luce’s, 4 ft. 4 ft. 4.3 5 ft. 5 ft. Coa. No. 8. . Coa No. 7. : es Coan Sona Mulford, No. 6. Barrett’s, 3 hts 4 ft. Coan No. 5 Coau No. 4 : ee) Coan Maulford, No. 3. Ql ft. : [257582] Coan Mulford, No. 2. I ft. CoaL Multord No. 16. Qué ft. 526 PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Examination of some veins in the Western Coal-fields of Kentucky, in relation to their palceontological characters. As during the time of our explorations we passed over different parts of the country, with a continuous change of level, any description of the veins of coal, in the order in which they came under our observa- tion, would be not only an arduous task, full of useless repetitions, but, by constantly transporting the reader to a different geological level, would confuse his mind about his exact position. The better plan, therefore, is to admit as correct a vertical section of the western coal- fields, and, beginning from the bottom of the measures, take each bed in the order of formation; then, describing the general characters of each of those beds, and mentioning afterwards all the places where the same coal has come under our examination, with the local and peculiar differences of each. In this way all will be clear, anda single glance at the horizontal section No. 1, will show, at once, the localities, with their true geological level, and suggest, at the same time, to the reader, precise conclusions with regard to the probable position of other beds of coal, and enable him to make other deductions for the greater cer- tainty of future researches. No.1. Vertical diagram of your first report, from Anvil Rock down to Battery Rock, is certainly the best that can be made, and, with some local changes, it will prove reliable in all the extent of the west- ern coal-fields of Kentucky. Following your suggestions, we will ad- mit the nomenclature of the veins of it, as follows: Beginning at the base of the measures, and omitting Battery-rock coal—a view which is scarcely developed any where in Kentucky— our No. 1 coal takes the place of both Cook coal, and 7th Bell’s coal, indicating their probable relative position by A and B—No. 1, B, being the Bell’s coal. The reason why both those veins are united in the same number, will be apparent hereafter. Our No. 2 is a thin coal, | marked on the diagram between two shales with iron stone. No. 3 is the 6th, or Ice-house coal of the diagram. No. 4 the Curlew coal. No. 5 four foot bed. No. 6, the little vein. No. 7, a thin coal above it: No. 8, Well coal. No. 9, 8d or five-foot Mulford coal. No. 10, 2d or middle coal. No. 11, the first coal under Anvil Rock. No. 12 the true first bed below Anvil Rock, in Hopkins and Muhlenburg counties, omitted in the diagram, because it is scarcely developed in Union county. PALZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 527 Battery-rock coal. Though in the eastern coal-fields some workable beds of coal have been found, not only in and below the conglomerates, but even in the red sandstone, there is not, apparently, in the western coal-fields of Kentucky, a true bed of coal formed in this position. Opposite Caseyville, below the conglomerate rocks, hang- ing over the landing on the-Illinois side, there is a thin black shale, itermixed with thin layers of coaly matter. This shale does not contain any fossils. The same shale has been reached at Caseyville, by boring a well below the conglomerates; but it does not contain any trace of coal, neither did the shales, though of soft texture and nearly black, show any remains of fossils of any kind. In Pennsylvania, the shales of the bituminous coal, or of the anthracite, exposed below the conglomerates, contain specimens of large pieces of Calamutes and Lepidodendron. Vo. 1 Coal. Above the conglomerates, and often reposing on them, there is a thick formation of black shales, varying in thickness from 20 to 70 feet, or more. It sometimes contains two beds of coal, one well developed, from 3 to 6 feet thick, and a thin one below. General- ly the position of the large bed No. 1, B, depends on the thickness of the shales. From the topographical observations it ought to be 70 feet above No. 1, A. But the paleontology of the opened coal, topo- graphically indicated as No. 1, A, having proved exactly the same as those indicated as No. 1, B, the only conclusion to which I can come is this, either in the western coal-fields of Kentucky there is a single bed of coal, formed in the shales above the conglomerates, and then, No. 1, A, and No. 1, B, are the same; (this is my settled opinion;) or the palzeontological characters of the shales are the same in their whole thickness, which is scarcely possible. In Pennsylvania, where the bed of shales contains two, and sometimes three, seams of coal, the shales of each peculiar bed of coal present a different appearance, and different fossil plants are found in connection with them. These fossil plants are especially the prints of the bark of large trees, Sigillaria, Calamites, especially Lepidodendron, (pl. 7, figs. 1, 4, 10); the cones of these last trees, Lepidostrobi, (pl. 7, fig. 3;) many other fruits of the genera T'rigonocarpon, Cardiocarpon, and Carpolithes, (pl. 7, figs. 5 to 9.) These fruits are generally compressed, resembling flattened al- 528 PALEHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. monds, peanuts, or peas.* The ferns imbedded in the shales are gen- erally of the largest species. The genus Sphenopieris, (pl. 6, fig. 1,) is represented in this low coal by most of its species, which are scarce- ly found above it, and some large Tecopteris, especially Tecopteris lon- chitica, (pl. 6, fig. 3,) belong also to this bed only. Meuwropteris her- suta, &e., (pl. 6, fig. 4,) is generally found in the shales; but this plant appears in the whole thickness of the Coal Measures, as well in Europe as in America. We mention it only to prevent mistaking it as the characteristic plant of a certain level, or admitting, for peculiar species, the numerous forms of its curious leaves scarcely ever found attached to the stems. These leaves are ordinarily lanceolate-oval, with a heart-shaped base, and have two small round kidney-shaped leaflets attached at its base, but sometimes they become either large, and nearly round, (Cyclopteris,) or narrow lance-shaped, or palmately cut in two or three linear divisions. Since its surface is. ordinarily strewn with scattered hairs, all these forms can easily be referred to their species. It has been asserted by many that Stgmaria ficoides, (pl. 7, figs. 2 and 2a,) isa plant, or rathera root, found in the fire-clay only, where it has sprung, supporting the trees that have formed the coal above it. This is a great mistake, which would be corrected by a single look at our bed, No. 1 coal, where the coal itself, and the shales above it, con- tain most abundant specimens of those Stigmaria. A remarkable peculiarity of the black shales of this coal is, that they contain, also, in immense numbers, the remains of a single spe- cies of shell, a small oval Lingula (Lingula umbonata,) which, by its appearance, indicates the first traces of the marine element in the shales. A few badly decayed leaves of ferns, and the Lepidostrodi, (pl. 7, figs. 3, 5, 6,) are found on the same shales with the shells, evi- dently showing that the vegetation had not entirely disappeared when. the marine water began to cover the marshes. This small Linguda, always the only shell found at the same geological level in the shales, not only in all the beds of the first coal in western Kentucky, but in Ohio, at Nelsonville and other places; in Virginia, at great Kanawha Salines; in Pennsylvania, at Rochester, Johnstown, &c.; indicates *This description is given only to facilitate the comprehension, but not at all as a scientific and real one. The fruits of the coal, though their appearance may sometimes be the same, do not have, in reality, the slightest analogy with those of our time. PALE NTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 529 the vast range of distribution of this species, and this peculiarity of a vein of coal preserving, in its shales, a palzeontological identity, for more than five hundred miles distance in a direct line. Bell's mine, Crittenden county, is extensively worked. This bed has a mean thickness of five feet. The coal has ordinarily one or two inches of cannel at the top of the bed. It is mostly covered by thick sandstone shales, full of leaves of Séigmaria, preserved.in their natu- ral round or cylindrical form, and scarcely flattened. These sandstone shales are not the original roof shales, which are generally wantiig here, but they have accidentally taken their place, after denudation of the first roof. The same case is observable at Minersville, Pa., in the corresponding bed of anthracite, viz: the second bed above the con- glomerates. The true roof shales are seen in some part of the mines at Bell’s, and contain Lingula umbonata in abundance. Near the base of the coal there is a thin bed of rash-coal, containing well preserved specimens of Lepidodendron, Sigilaria, and Stigmaria. This rash- coal is certainly a peculiar and reliable character, and has been seen at all the places where we had opportunity to examine No. 1 coal—always containing laminated bark of Lepidodedron and Calamites. It is also well marked in the coal fields of Ohio and Pennsylvania, at the same geological level. Half a mile southeast of Bell’s we were shown the old opening of a vein previously worked, but now abandoned. They called it Cook’s vein, and said that it was at a different level from Bell’s, viz; about 70 feet below. The palseontological remains of the shales prove that this supposition is a mistake. The roof-shales of this coal are the same thick sandstone shales, full of Siigmaria, as at Bell’s, and the bottom has the rash-coal, with the Lepidodendron. We did not explore the in- terior of this vein, which is full of water, but the characters were evi- dent enough in the shales heaped at its mouth. Between Bell’s and Tradewater river, the same vein has been opened and worked, and there also we found the sandstone shales, with round Stigmaria, and the rash coal with Lepidodendron. Casey’s mune, on the west side of Tradewater river, has its roof shales more developed than Bell’s, and shows, in their composition, all the essential characters of the coal on this level. The black slates of the coal contain not only a great abundance of Lingula umbonata, but 67 530 PALONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. also the fruits of Lepidodendron, viz: Lepidostrobus, and its detached leaves Lepidophyllum. The rash coal at the bottom has the Lepido- dendron, Sigmaria, and Calamites in abundance, and the coal itself is topped as at Bell’s, by one or two inches of cannel. Moreover, at some places in the mines the black shale is wanting, and its place is taken by the sandstone shales with round leaves of Skgmaria. The distance between the two mines of Casey’s and Bell’s being short, a few miles only—the exact resemblance of the shales and of the fossil remains, is not a remarkable coincidence; but it is otherwise when we compare the fossils with those found at the same geological level in far distant localities. We have seen that the Zinguda abounds in many places in the low coal of Qhio and Pennsylvania. The Lepidostrobus has, till now, never been found but in the corresponding low coal at Johnstown, at the base of Portage Railroad, in the bituminous coal- fields of Pennsylvania, and at Wilkesbarre, in the anthracite basin. The presence of those fruits or cones, in the same shales as the Lingula, evidently shows that they were the last remains of the vegetation of this coal, and that they had been detached from some trees still stand- ing above the shallow water, and living in it when the vegetation of the surface had already disappeared. Old Distillery coal, just above Caseyville, has its place at the same level, evidently marked by the abundance of Lepidodendron in the rash coal of the bottom, and by the Lingula and Stigmaria in the shales of the roof. That there may be near by the same place, a shaft to a lower bed of coal, is possible. But we did not see it, and the po- sition of this coal of the Old Distillery, would scarcely lead to the supposition of another bed of coal below it. A recently opened vein, one and a half miles north of Caseyville, on the property of the Kentucky Coal Company, though supposed to be also at a lower level, afforded another favorable opportunity of test- ing the value of a paleontological identification. We found this coal covered with a shaly sandstone, full of Skgmaria, and by three to four inches of black shales, with Lepidodendron and Lepidostrobus. Its thickness is only two feet six inches. It has some ‘cannel at its top, and a rashy bottom, with fine remains of Lepidodendron, Calamites and Stigmaria. PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 531 Opposite Caseyville, on the Illinois side of the Ohio river, there is a bed of coal belonging to Dr. Long, which, following topographical indications, is placed below the conglomerates, and indicated as Batte- ry-rock coal. This coal is, without doubt, above the conglomerates, and from the plants and fossil remains of the roof shales, is the same as our No. 1. The appearance of the shales is, however, different. The marine element being less predominent, the shies grayish col- ored, and full of well preserved remains of plants. The whole flora of the low coal is there—Stigmaria, Lepidodendron, Lepidostrobus, and ma- ny other fruits, with large leaves of ferns, especially Pecopteris lonchitica. As the bed is not worked, and the shales are very brittle, we had to study them on the place, and it was not possible to collect good speci- mens, except a very large and well preserved root of Stigmaria. At Union mines, Crittenden county, twenty miles below Caseyville, the characteristic fossils of No. 1 coal, are still more numerous, and in a better state of preservation. The shales there are thick and well developed. First, the sandstone shales, with Stigmarta; then, in some places above the coal, the black shales, with Lepidostrodus and the Lingula ; and still oftener, the gray soft shales, full of plants, espe- cially Pecopteris lonchitica and Sphenopteris. The coal itself is ordi- narily topped bya few inches of cannel, and its bottom has always the rash coal, with the same remains of plants, as we have enumerated be- fore. The shales at Union mine would have afforded a good opportu- nity for collecting and studying a great number of species of fossil plants, had they not been softened by rain, and our specimens nearly all broken by transportation. The species which were left entire enough to be just distinguishable, are the following: 1. Alethopteris sinuata, Brg’t. 2. Alethopteris lonchitica, Brgt. 3. Sphenopteris tridactilites, Brg't. 4. Spenopteris intermedia, Lsqx. 6. Asterophil- lites avalis, Lsq’x. 6. Culamites Suckovit, Brg’t. 7. Lepidodendron politum, Sp. Nov. 8. Two other species of Lepidodendron, (broken.) 9. Lepidophloios rugosus, Lsq’x. 10. Lycopodites Sticlerianus, Gopp ? FTawesville coal. Passing to the eastern part of the western coal- fields of Kentucky, we had first a good opportunity of exploring the lowest bed of coal at Hawesville, Hancock county, where it is exten- sively worked. The coal, three feet ten inches to four feet thick, is cannel abt the top,and reposes upon six inches of rash coal, containing 532 PALE )NTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. still the same plants—Lepidodendron, Calamites, and Stigmaria. The black shales above the coal are full of Lingula umbonata, and have also some remains of broken plants, especially Lepidostrobus, of which we obtained good specimens at Mayo’s vein. In connection with this bed, and above it, are also the gray shales, with a few fern leaves of the same species, as at Union mines. About seventy feet above the main coal at Hawesville, there is, fol- lowing the assertions of Mr. Taylor, director of the mines, a bed of rash coal, with large stems of Calamites and Lepidodendron. It ought to be separated from the main coal by thirty feet of sandstone shales, and thirty feet of black shales, containing the above mentioned fossil shells and plants. Does this rash col, if its position is exactly mark- ed, indicate the place of another bed of coal, or is it still a continuance of the interrupted black shales which, at some places, are seventy feet thick? Or, perhaps, has it been displaced by one of the numerous faults which break the level of the Hawesville vein? These are ques- tions that remain to be solved. Breckinridge coal The appearance and chemical composition of this coal would indicate, for this vein, a far different level. Nevertheless, a short examination of the fossil plants of the shales, suffices to ascer- tain thatits geological position is the same as that of the Hawesville. The coal, twenty-eight to thirty inches thick, is entirely cannel, and full of stems and leaves of Sé‘gmaria, the outlines of which have been preserved by sulphuret of iron. Under it the rash coal is seen, with its Lepidodendron, Calamites, and Stigmaria, and it is topped by a heavy bed of black bituminous shales, with Lingula wmbonata, and some specimens of decayed fern leaves. As it generally happens, in very bituminous shales, the plants are scarcely preserved. Their out- line only is indicated here and there, but with such indistinctness that they cannot be exactly determined ; the coal itself, however, has pre- served beautiful prints of Lepidodendron. We have previously men- tioned that the Ségmaria have probably been plants of astrong texture —a kind of creeping roots, especially active in the preparation of the fire-clay. If this were so, they could not contain much bitumen, and yet they are found in abundance, and well preserved in outlines, in the richest oil producing coal of Kentucky, and perhaps of the, United States. Since: ig is proved that the Siiginaria were of the nature, of PALJEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 533 roots or, as I think, were creeping rootstocks, producing trees under favorable circumstances, their presence in a bed of coal, where they could not creep, as in the water, and where their direction was neces- sarily changed by many circumstances, indicates that there were plen- ty of trees living at the time of the formation of this coal. If the trees had had the same hardened silicious bark as the Stigmaria, their out- line would also have been preserved; but being especially of conifer- ous or resinous species, they have been entirely transfo:med into coal. This shows that the cannel coal results from the abundance of some kinds of trees, especially Sigillaria and Lepidodendron, or perhaps Lepi- dodendron only. Moreover, the chemical composition of some plants, especially of roots, depends on the place where they grow; on the wa- ter which they absorb. The needles or leaves of coniferous trees, for example, living on the limestone, contain only two per cent. of silica, when the same species, living on silicious ground, have as much as five to six per cent. of it. We must therefore suppose, that according to their habitation, the Séigmarta would necessarily show a difference in their composition. The analysis of the Breckinridge coal proves, nevertheless, that though it has been formed of resinous trees, since it contains sixty- three per cent. of volatile matter, there were abundantly mixed with it plants highly charged with siliceous matter—the St/gmaria certainly — for it gives by combustion as much as eight per cent. of ashes. ‘lhe main coal of the Shawneetown Company, at quite a different level, is also very bituminous, does not show any trace of St/gmaria, and has only one half per cent. of ashes. If it had been possible to see at once, and opened, all the beds of the Coal Measures in successive order, the true characteristic fossils of every one of them could perhaps have been examined and described; but in a level country, where the highest hills do not exceed three hun- dred feet, such an examination is no where possible. In both places where, according to your directions, we could expect to sce a succession of coal beds, at different levels, viz; at Shawneetown, and at the Saline Mining Company’s works, in Illinois, we had good opportunities to study the fossils of vein Nos. 9,and 11. At the Kentucky Coal Com- pany mines, we saw open one bed still lower-—No. 6, or Little vein. But we,did not. find any place where beds 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 8, were opened, 534 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. and their geological level fixed with such certainty that we could take them as a point of comparison for the examination of others. Coal No.2. We have not yet seen this bed satisfactorily in place in Western Kentucky; in fact, this coal may be united in the west with No. 1, B, since I found at Beaver, at Johnstown, at Nelsonsville, and other places, a coal which I think will prove the equivalent of Lesley’s cannel coal C, which contains apparently the same Lingula umbonata as was found in the shales over No. 1, B, of Union county. There appears to be a gradual diminution of the space between this cannel bed C, of Pennsylvania, and the great bed below it going west; for, though at some places in that state the distance is seventy feet, at Zanes- ville, Ohio, it is only twelve feet; at Hopwelltown, Ohio, five feet; and at Nelsonsville, Ohio, only one foot, and sometimes only four inches. Therefore, it would not be very remarkable if, in Kentucky, it should be united with coal No. 1, B. Moreover, this bed is often wanting either in its separate state or in conjunction with No.1, B. In the last case, the shales of the coal No. 1, B, are less bituminous, grayish, full of plants only, and without shells. At the Breckinridge mines, it seems to occupy the whole place of No. 1, B, and has influenced its trans- formation into cannel. Coal No. 3. Near Mulford’s mines we were shown, as being proba- bly the Ice-house coal, a scarcely opened bed, of which the remarka- bly bard, greyish colored shales were marked with well preserved stems of ferns, especially of Meuropteris hirsuta, (pl. 6, fig. 4:) Being un- able to see more of this coal than a few shales, and being uncertain as to its true level, we could make no characteristic and reliable descrip- tion of it. But judging from a palzeontological point of view, No. 3 coal, seen at Hawesville, is not the same as the one mentioned at Mul- ford, as the probable Ice-house coal. It is much more likely referred to coal D, of Lesley’s manual, which is extensively worked at Zanes- ville, (two to four feet thick,) where its shales are full of shells, espe- cially of large Productus and Spirifer. I should not have a doubt of their being coeval if it was not for the absence of limestone above this coal at Zanesville, where the eight feet shales are covered with forty feet of sandstone. But the limestone of this coal is a local formation.: In his general description of the lower coals, Mr. Lesley indicates a limestone H, separated from coal D by fifty feet shales And even at’ PALZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 535 Zanesville, there is above this coal, on the top of Putnam hills, a thin fossiliferous bed of limestone. As for the value of the limestone as a character for identification of the coal beds, a look at both vertical sec- tions, No. 1 and No. 2, of the first report of the Geological Survey of Kentucky, will show its deficiency. The bed of limestone, only four feet thick, of the first diagram, is represented in the second by a heavy formation of two beds of limestone, the one thirty-three feet, and the other eight feet thick, separated by five feet of shales. This 3rd coal at Hawesville is about two hundred and ten feet above No. 1, B, the main coal at this place. It has been opened and work- ed for a time and is now abandoned—its thickness being only twenty- two inches. It is covered by a black shale one foot thick, which de- composes in powder under the atmospheric action, and shows no trace of fossils, either shells or plants. Upon the shales there lies another soft and still looser sandy, micaceous, buff-colored shale, insensibly passing into limestone, and full of large Productus and Spirifer. This shale is like a rotten limestone, and the fossils that it contains, though badly preserved, are easily separated from it. It is overtopped by a bed of limestone. Coal No. 4. We had no better opportunity to study this coal than the former, in the coal-fields of western Kentucky. The coal with two clay partings, that is referred by order of superposition to this geolog- ical horizon in Curlew hill, with limestone at a distance of fifteen feet beneath it, I had no opportunity of examining, as the old opening into this coal was entirely filled up, and the roof shales quite inacces- sible. At Giger’s hill, Union county, we examined a coal three feet thick, with two clay-partings, covered ‘with a bed of five to six feet shales, differently colored, grey or black, becoming soft and finely grained in the proximity of the coal, and entirely covered with prints of Meurop- teris flexuosa, Brt., (pl. 6, fig. 2.) This species, like Meuropteris hir- suta, Lsq’x., is generally too far distributed in the whole thickness of the Coal Measures to afford, by its presence alone, a true reliable char- acter for the geological position of a vein. Though it is most abun- dant in the Pomeroy coal of Ohi +, which would correspond with our coal No, 4, I have found it also in the barren measures between Athens and Marietta, Ohio, above the Pittsburg vein, and even in the shales of. 536 PALAHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. a higher level near Greensburg, Penn. In Posey county Indiana, there is a bed of barren shales, abundantly covered with this same plant, which is also in a much higher geological position than the coal No. 4. As there is then some evidence going to show that the coal of Giger’s hill occupies a higher position in the Coal Measures, we must leave this for the present undecided, until further data are collected. The 4th coal, which has the same geological horizon as the Pomeroy coal of Ohio, and the Gates and Salem vein of Pennsylvania, is gene- rally covered with greyish-black, hard, somewhat micaceous shales, in which the greatest number of species of fossil plants. are preserved. We have already mentioned Meuropteris flexuosa, which is there in the greatest abundance, but it is necessary to name some other species, more or less generally distributed in this bed, and which may serve to its identification in different places of the coal-fields: Ist. Pinnularia—a large confervoid plant, resembling a much branched thread-like root. 2nd. A brownish yellow fucoid, of which fragments only are found, detaching easily from the stone, like a thin skin—these are both found especially in the Ohio coal-fields, at Pomeroy and Federal creek. 3rd. Asterophillites—plants resembling’ our Horselails (Equisetacea,) with long whorled branches, bearing, at short and equal distances, whorls of short narrow linear leaves. 4th. Sphenophyllum and Annularia— floating plants, with whorls of flattened, entire or diversely cut leaflets. 5th. Many species of Meuropteris and Pecopteris, especially Meurop- teris fimbriata, Lsq’x., and Pecopteris arborescens, Brt. 6th. Fabella- ria boracifolia, Sterab—a plant which, by its long ribbon-like leaves, closely and very finely ribbed, embracing the stem at the base, bears a strong likeness to a species of palm. The stem is seldom found—I ob- tained this year, for the first time, a specimen of it, at Salem vein, of Port-carbon, near Pottsville, Penn.; but the leaves are most abundant in all the shales of this 4th coal, and may be considered a true charac- teristic of it. In the lower beds I have seen some fragments of anoth- er larger species, but none of this. At Giger’s we did not find any, and the only species discovered there, except Neuropteris flexuosa, is another fine Veuropteris, probably referrable to Newropteris conjugata, Gopp. This vein has, also, some species of Calamites, Sigillaria, and Stigmaria in its shales, but I never saw in them any Lepidondendron nor Lepidostrobus. PALEUNTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 537 The abundance of fossil plants preserved in this 4th coal, is traly astonishing. At Pomeroy the roof is in some places: totally covered with those remains. In some pieces of shales, less than half a foot square, taken from Salem vein, at Pottsville, I have counted fifteen to twenty species. It might appear extraordinary that Pom2roy coal of Ohio, and Salem vein, of Pennsylvania, the highest bed of the an- thracite.coal basin, ought to be referred to the same geological level ; but if we believe palzeontologicl evidence, we cannot come to another conclusion, most of the fossil plants being of the same species, and these species being found no where else. Besides, its paleontological characters, No. 4 coal is murked by its one or two clay partings, which eastwards, become very thick, and form true strata, separating the vein into two or three, and also by the superposition of heavy beds of sandstone. Coal Nv. 5, has not been satisfactorily seen, as the old opening, like that of No. 4, is now entirely filled, and the shales that were taken out not only disintegrated, but mixed up with those of No. 6 coal lying above. On section 24, T. 3, R. 2 W., about a mile southeast of the Mul- ford’s mines, Mr. Cox examined a coal, and obtained some fossil ferns from its shale roof. These I find to be prints of Neuropleris teneu/fo- lia, Brg’t., a species so very like Meuropteris fexuosa, Br’t., (Pl. 6, fig. 2,) that is unnecessary to give a drawiug of it. It differs only in the thinness of the veinlets, scarcely visible to the naked eye. This coal vein is cannel at the top, passing insensibly into four feet of black shales, in which the above plaats were found. These species of ferns remind me of those which ovcui in the roof of a bed of anthracite coal, which I examined in Shamokin Valley, Pennsylvania. Coal No. 6, has been opened at \-ulford’s mines, Union county, Kentucky, where we first examined it, and where it is called Little vein. The coal is somewhat rashy, mix.d with an abundance of pieces of charcoal, and colored brown with oxide of iron. It. has above it a thin layer of black brittle slates, with 1cmains of stems covered by arenaceous, micaceous, yellow, or chocolate colored shales, marked with innumerable remains of much broken, nearly ground up plants. In ascending the bed of shales, they became whitish, passing insensibly into sandstone shales, and the remains of plants m>re and moré‘pul- 68 538 PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. verized, cover them in an indistinct mass. Though I cannot name any peculiar species, in connection with this bed of coal, since all the examined remains were too much broken to be recognizable, the gener- al appearance of the shales is peculiar enough to serve as a reliable character. We knew this coal again at first sight when we came to it with Mr. Cox, two and an half miles from Hartford, Ohio county, Kentucky, where it is worked near the Owensboro’ road; and still again, lately, while on a tour of exploration in the southern part of the coal basin of Ohio, I knew it at once when I saw it at Steiger’s vein, near Athens, and from the inspection of the shales alone, fixed at once its true geological level. Coal No. 7, is athin bed, which we did not see any where in the western coal-fields of Kentucky, but of which we examined the shales exposed in a rivulet on the Saline Coal Company’s property, in Illinois. These shales contain a few shells, but particularly some very small scales and teeth of fishes. These teeth are sharp, straight, and of a different form from those found in the beds above. I thought at first that it was not worth while mentioning this coal, since it is generally very thin—for it has been passed through by a shatt at Mulford’s, and has been found to be there about thirty inches thick ; at Holloway’s boring, near Henderson, its place is occupied by a black shale, with only some trace of coal; and in the IMnois coal-fields, it is only a few inches thick. But though not valuable in a material point of view, this bed becomes important by its characteristic fossils, and its geolo- logical position. Being lately at Athens, on an exploring tour through the coal-fields of southern Ohio, I had the opportunity to survey, on the property of Horace Willson, Esq., a bed of shales which was thought to contain a vein of coal. I collected there teeth and scales of fishes, and after a comparative examination, I found them to be of the same species as those which we collected with Mr. E. T. Cox on the Saline Company’s property. This bed of shales near Athens, Ohio, contains only a few inches coal, and its position is about one hun- dred feet below the Pittsburg coal, which is worked somewhat higher in the hills. The identity of both these beds of western Kentucky and Ohio veins, as we said before, is of great importance, since it enables us to point out, with some accuracy, the place that the Pittsburg coal occupies in the western coal-fields. This place, as we PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 639: will show more evidently in the examination of coal No. 9, is very probably the one occupied by the following No. 8, or Well coal. Coal No. 8. This coal has been crossed in the shaft at Malford’s, where it is two feet six inches thick. But we could not see it, nor ex- amine any of its shales, as the shaft was not accessible. It has been passed through, also, at the Holloway’s boring, and has been mentioned in the survey of the Saline Company, always with the same thickuess. This indicates a reliable and extensively formed vein of coal, and for this reason, it is especially to be regretted that we did not find a sin- gle opportunity of comparing the fossils of its shales with those of the great Pittsburg coal. The characteristic plants of this remarkable bed are not well defined. The shales immediately above the coal, are very black, bituminous, and covered with stems of ferns without leaves ; these stems are very numerous, and sometimes heaped together ina confused mass. The vein of coal is divided into two, (rarely three stra- ta,) by clay partings, or shales of various thickness, and it is only above its upper roof shales that some leaves of ferns, especially of Neuropteris hirsuta, Lesq’x., and Pecopteris heterophylla, Brg’t., are preserved in a reddish ferruginous hard shale. It may appear strange that we can refer to a coal, generally acknowl- eged as the thickest and most extensive one, such a thin bed as our No. 8; but, if we follow the Pittsburg coal from its eastern limits, where it attains its greatest thickness, we see it gradually thinning westward, in aremarkably uniform manner. In the Cumberland basin of Pennsylvania it is fourteen feet thick; in Elk Lick township, Som- merset county, eleven feet; in Legonnier valley, Fayette county, and at Pittsburg, nine feet;* at Wheeling, it is already reduced to a little more than six feet, viz: coal one foot, shales one foot, coal five feet five inches; and at Athens, Ohio, to about five feet, viz: two feet five inches coal, one foot and an half fire-clay or shales, and three feet coal. From Cumberland, Penn., to Athens, Ohio, the distance in a direct line is about one hundred and eighty miles, and from Athens to Mulford’s, in western Kentucky, three hundred and fifty miles. If the grada- tion in the decreasing thickness of the vein had continued, without change, the great Pittsburg vein would have been reduced to nothing long before reaching the Kentucky coal-fields. *See Lesley’s Manual of the coal, p. 84. 540 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Coal No. 9. This is, in western Kentucky, a reliable bed, and its coal is generally of very good quality. It is so well characterized by - the fossil remains of its shales, that it is easily identified. Its thick- ness varies from three to five feet, and it is covered with a thick bed of black, hard, laminated and slaby shales, which contains a quantity of vegetable, but especially of animal, remains. The plants preserved in the shales are mostly stems of ferns, and pieces of the bark of Sigillaria. The shells, much more numerous, at least as individuals, have two species, which may be taken, among others, as characteristic, viz: Avicula rectalateraria and Produclus muricatus. Teeth, scales, and fins of fishes, (Zceythyodorulites) are also found in the shales of this coal, with the shells, but those remains are in grédt abundance only where the shells have disappeared; we have found them in all the places where we had an opportunity for the examination ‘of the vein, ordinarily accompanied by a conical, regularly-ribbed print, about half an inch deep, and nearly as broad at its base. This fossil has been re- ferred to a peculiar scale, which covers the head of a kind of fish, Cephalapsis, of which the caudal square and shining scales, are also found on the same shells with remains of small Prerichthys, another spe- cies of fishes of the Coal Measures.* Sometimes, also, these remains were accompanied with well marked small Cadamites, which, from their length and their slenderness, appear to have lived in deep water. The remains of fishes which abound in the shales of coal No. 9 are also found, apparently of the same species in the shales of coal No. 11. In this way, if the identification of both these veins should repose on palzeontology alone, it would be sometimes impossible to make a dis- tinction between them, except by means of the shells, which, however, are not found everywhere. The shells themselves aré numerous, and of species so very like that it requires a good deal of scientific perspicaci- | ty to distinguish them. But the identification, or rather’ the distinc- tion of the beds is easily made out from this difference, that No. 11 coal is ordinarily separated into two by a clay parting, and that its shales are covered by limestone, either as a more or less well developed continuous or interrupted limestone, or indicated by a ferruginous clay, containing the shells of this limestone. Moreover, the shales of No. 4Lyell’s Manual of Gevlogy, p. 344, 346, PALMONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 543 9 are generally of a coarser texture than those of No. 11; under the microscope they appear covered with small whitish spots, which are ei- ther very small shells or crushed grains of sand. In regard to the distribution of the shells, it is necessary to recall here what we have said on the distribution of the plants. In the shales, of two beds formed near each other, all the species cannot be different, therefore, the change in them ought to be examined with the greatest care, before we decide that a paleontological distinction is impossible, because some species of shells or remains of fishes are identical in both beds. Though the fire-clay of the bottom cannot give precise indications, we may mention that below coal No. 9 this clay is thick—from ten to twenty feet and more, and insensibly passes into a hard rock, resem- bling a variegated limestone. At Hartford it forms along the river true. perpendicular cliffs. This particular hardness, thickness, and color of the fire-clay, attracted lately my attention to a bed of coal, exposed in a cut of the Pennsylvania Railroad, about three miles east of Greensburg. Supposing that it might perhaps indicate an identi- cal horizontal level with our No. 9 coal, I had the black roof shales opened, and by examination found them to contain the same remains of fishes as those enumerated above. This bed of coal, only one foot thick, is separated, by limestone, shales, and sandstone, from another thick vein of coal, which is exposed still higher, and it is in the vicin- ity of this last coal, and just at the eastern end of the tunnel, that I collected, in great abundance, and in a perfect state of preservation, many species of shells which, after examination, Mr. E. T. Cox pro-: nounced to be all of the same species as those of our 11th coal. Thus we have here the thick, hard, colored fire-clay, and the remains of fish- es of coal No. 9, and with the coal above it the characteristic shells of No. 11, to show evidently the concordance of the geological level at both places, in the Pennsylvania and western Kentucky coal-fields. The veins of coal mentioned above, and exposed in the great cut be- fore the first tunnel east of Greensburg, have evidently their place in the great limestone of the upper Coal Measures of Pennsylvania—the lowest about one hundred feet above the Pittsburg coal, the other some- what higher, between two beds of limestone, of which the inferior is, More than twenty feet thick. This is a new and remarkable coinci- 542 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. dence, since, in the Holloway’s boring, near Henderson, Ky., our 11th coal is found also between two strata of limestone, the upper four feet: thick, 'theTinferior eight feet. Thus the supposition that the Pittsburg vein is represented by the 8th coal, in the western Kentucky coal- fields, is confirmed, since the distance to No. 9 is the same as that mark- ed in Lesley’s Manual, between the Pittsburg vein and the 1st coal of the great limestone.* Before entering the western coal-fields of Kentucky, we had good opportunity to study the shales of No. 9 coal, first at the Shawneetown Mining Company’s mines, and then at the Saline Company’s mines, Illinois. At this last place, especially where the coal is extensively worked, we saw the characteristic shells in the shales, especially Avzcula. rectalateraria and Productus muricatus, with some remains of fishes and large nodules of iron, sometimes perfectly round and of immense size, containing at some places a great number of shells, and even fine pieces of petrified wood. They are especially formed of sulphuret of iron, and so hard that they can only be broken after they have been roasted in the heaps of burning shales. Curlew mines, Union county, Kentucky, Io. 9, is here the main coal, four feet thick, covered with thick black shales, in which are imbedded large nodules of sulphuret of iron. With the remains of fishes. Avz- cula rectalateraria, 1s the only shell that we found in the shales, and even it is scarce here. Generally speaking, this shell is unequally distributed—sometimes extraordinary abundant, and sometimes entire- ly wanting over extensive surfaces. At Curlew mines, the shales con- tain also large pieces of Sigillaria. Mulford’s mines, Union county. The main coal here is still No. 9; it is four to five feet thick, covered with the same thick black shales as at Curlew, but with a much greater abundance of fossil shells. Avicula rectalateraria, and especially Productus muricatus are accumu- lated in the shales in such quantities that they cover them sometimes entirely. The large nodules of iron, also, of which some had been burnt and broken, were seen to contain quantities of different species of shells, especially large bivalves and fine pieces of wood. Jackfield’s coal, at Capt. Davis’, Hopkins county. Though the coal No. 9 is not worked here, it has been opened and its shales expased ®*See Lesley’s Manual of the coal, p. 84 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 548 well enough to permit its identification. The coal is four to five feet thick, and the black shales above it contain the teeth and remains of fishes, characterizing both No. 9 and No. 11 coals. The coal has no clay parting, and no limestone above it. About halfa mile above Pidgeon run coal bed, in a rivulet near Capt. Davis’ residence, there is an out-crop of coal, which appears to belong to the same No, 9, open- ed by Thom. Davis. Peaks of Otter coal, on is, head waters of Steward’s creek, Hop- kins county, is four to five feet thick, and is covered with shales of exactly the same appearance, and with the same fossil remains as the former. It has no clay parting, and no trace of limestone above the shales. Coal No. 9 is. also open and worked four to five feet thick, at the Peaks of Otter, near Alfred Town’s house, with exactly the same shales as above. - McNairy’s coal, Pond river, Muhlenburg county. No. 9 coal crops out here, in the bed of a rivulet, where we could examine a few shales only. They contained the remains of fishes. The coal is not open- ed, and appears to be five feet thick. Near the road from Greenville to Paradise, about two miles east of Greenville, we examined two beds of the coal No. 9. The first, Capt. _ Wing’s bank, is two feet thick; the other, Isaac Luce’s bank, one mile distant on the other side of the road, five feet in thickness. Both beds are without clay partings and limestene, and are covered with black slaby shales, marked with the same numerous remains of fishes belonging to this coal. Airdrie, Muhlenburg county, Kentucky. No. 9 coal is not worked now at this place, but it has been, in a shaft sunk from the top of the hill. The shales of this bed are still heaped up near the opening, and were easily identified. - Though there can be no doubt about the posi- tion of this bed here, since it is marked by the section of the shaft, it was interesting to ascertain the identity of the fossils. The coarse grained shales of this bed, exactly of the same texture as those of all the beds before mentioned, contain also exactly the same remains. Hartford, Ohio county, Kentucky. The same No. 9 coal is seen at this. place, on the banks of Rough creek. The coal is only two feet thick. It has the same shales, the same remains of fishes, a few shells, 544 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Avicula rectalateraria only. We have mentioned before, that at this place the thick fire-clay below the coal insensibly passes into a hard rock, cut in bluffs, along the river. Lewisport, Hancock county, Kentucky. The main. coal opened. near this place, one and a half miles from the Ohio river, still belongs to No. 9. The vein is not worked.now, but the old shales, though very much decayed, afford materials enough for identification. Among the shales there are some boulders of limestone, or rather nodules of iron, which contain an abundance of the same shells that we found at Mul- ford’s, especially Productus muricatus. One mile further west of this place, the same coal is worked now in a small way, for the demand of the town. It has here the same slabby shales, with the same fossils. The main thickness of the coal at both places is four feet to four feet four inches. Henderson shaft, Ky. The 9th coal is reached here about one hun- dred and ninety feet from the top of the shaft, as marked in the sec- tion, p.p. 36 to 39 of the first report. The shales of this bed are easily distinguishable in the rubbish, having in them the fossil remains of fishes, and the Avicula rectalateraria. The paleontological identifica- tion is here of small interest, because the shales of the shaft are all_ mixed together in a heap, and also because the section itself gives the best indication about the place of this coal. This section agrees near- ly foot by foot with No. 1, vertical diagram of the report of the Saline Company, Ind. The distance from the coal, two feet four inches, lit- tle Newburg coal, which is No. 11, is one hundred and eight feet, show- ing the total absence of the middle coal. At Saline Company it is one hundred and two feet, and at Shawneetown Company, Ind., one hundred and ten feet. Coal No. 10. This vein appears to be the most unreliable and in- constant of all. It looks like a wandering bed, sometimes high up, sometimes descending, most of the time entirely absent or joined to No. 11. I would have omitted its description if we had not seen it at Shawneetown Company mine, where it has been scarcely opened. The coal, two to three feet thick, looks brittle and oxidated, an appearance possibly caused by atmospheric influence, and disintegration of the out- cropping part. The roof shales are black, hard, compact, not slabby, but irregularly breaking, and without any traces of shells. The bot- PALMONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 545 tom is a micaceous coarse fire-clay, full of Stigmaria, resembling sand- stone shales. This is all that we can possibly say of this bed, which entirely disappears, at least as an isolated bed, in all the part of the coal-fields that we have explored. The shaft of the Henderson Com- pany shows there its total absence; at the Holloway boring its place only is marked by a three feet two inches bed of black shales, with some little coal; at the Airdrie shaft there is no trace of it; at Curlew and Mulford’s, coals No. 9 and No. 11 are open on the same hills, and the place of No. 10 is indicated only hy a coal dirt. If we had found it at any other place the remarkable conformation of its fire-clay would have afforded an easy identification of it. The only way of account ing for its disappearance is by supposing that it is generally part of coal No. 11, and that at Shawneetown Company mine, where it is separa- ted from it by forty-three feet of shales, it has somewhat gone out of its way. Perhaps this is the cause of the irregular and sometimes large thickness of No. 11, and of its one and sometimes two clay partings, also very variable in their thickness. There is about the position of this bed a difference between the to- pographical assertions and our own. But this difference is probably caused by mistaking, in some places, No. 11 for No. 10. With such beds, unreliable in their directions, the topography, by itself, and without the aid of the paleontology, must necessarily lead to error. Coal No. 11. This is a peculiar, generally very fine and well de- veloped bed of coal, though varying from two to nine feet in thickness. We have previously observed, that as regards the remains of fishes, espe- cially, there is a remarkable identity in the paleeontological characters of this and No. 9 coal. The shells appear to be generally of different species, and especially distr:buted in a different proportion. From the notes of Mr. Cox, who may perhaps change the nomenclature of the shells after a more careful examinatiou, No. 11 coal is especially charac- terized by an abundance of Pleurotomaria of various species; Pro- ductus Rogeri? (N. and P.;) Nueula Hameri? and by a large Avicula, resembling Avicula rectalateraria, but larger and with a difference in the ribs of the side wings. The fossil plants are not so generally dis- tributed in those shales as in No. 9, especially the Sigillaria seems to be wanting. The shales also are of finer texture, more bituminous, 69 546 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. and not so easily separated into slabs. The remains of shells are gen- erally much more numerous, and the number of species much greater. This bed can generally be recognized by its parting. But it should be observed that when the vein thickens much the clay partings are double, and when it thins to two or three feet, there is, ordinarily, none; but this last: case is very rare. Curlew mine, Union county, Kentucky. At this place,about one hun- dred feetabove the main coal, wehad the first good opportunity of study- ing the coal No. 11, and of collecting the fossil shells of its shales. All the characters above described are found there. The coal at Cur- lew, as of Shawneeton Company, Illinois, is mostly bird-eye. In the anthracite coal-fields of Pennsylvania, there is also a peculiar bed, in which this kind of coal is generally seen. It would be very inter- esting to ascertain if both these beds are on the same geological level. This I was unable to do, since I saw only specimens of the coal in cabinets, but never the place where they had been taken. At the Curlew mine, above the shales of No. 11, there is a bed of fossiliferous limestone. Thompson's mine, Union county, Kentucky. Coal No. 11, is open at this place: It is six feet thick, hasa clay parting, and the shales contain the remains of fishes, and some of the above mentioned shells. There is above it a bed of limestone, passing into brown ferruginous, hardened clay, full of fossil shells of the same species as in the lime- stone. Llewellyn mines, Union county, Kentucky. Same coal at this place, about six feet thick, with clay parting, and limestone above the shales. The shales, though thin, have the same fossil remains as the for ner. Providence, Hopkins county, Kentucky. At this place the coal No. 11, crops out around the hill, on which the town is built. Its charae- teristics are exactly the same as at Thompson and Llewellyn, viz: coal five to six feet thick, with clay parting, covered with black slabby shales, with remains of fishes, and some shells, and above them the limestone, passing into rotten ferruginous brown stone or shale, full of fossil shells, especially of a Productus Rogersi, marked with short spines. About one mile west of the town, among the hills, there has been opened a bed of coal, four to six feet thick, which has the same shales, but wants the limestone above them. Nevertheless, the place PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 547 of this limestone being indicated by a thin bed of yellow ferruginous clay, with fossil shells, we referred this bed to the same coal 11, with some doubt. Pigeows Run, Hopkins county. This coal is No. 11, cight to nine .feet thick. It has a clay parting, and is covered with four to five feet of black shales, always containing the same fossil remains as those mentioned above. The limestone above itis irregular,mostly in boul- ders or large slabs, as at Thompson’s mines, and at the Shawneetown Company’s mines. In Hopkins county, Kentuky, No.11 coal is opened at the Sisk bank, and seen at some other places around in Town’s property, with the same shales and limestone. Arnold's mine, four aud a half miles south of Madisonville, Hopkins counly. No. 11 coal is here eight feet thick, has two clay partings, and a thick bed of black slabby shales, with an abundance of fossil re- mains, fishes, and shells, which give character to this coal. The slabs are covered with limestone. . MeNairy’s coal, Pond river, Muhlenburg county. No. 11 coal is opened here at two places, seven feet thick. The clay parting, the shales, with their characteristic fossils, and the limestone above them, are found at each place. Here, also, coal No. 12 is present, and comes so near No. 11], that it is separated from it only by its floor of two feet six inches of fire clay, and by the limestone (one foot thick,) of No. 11 coal. Miller’s coal, ox Lsaac’s creek, Muhlenburg county, belongs to No. 11. It is six feet thick, has its usaal black shales, with the before mention- ed fossil remains, its superimposed limestone, and a clay parting. The brown ferruginous and fossiliferous clay or shale is also present here, covering the limestone. This ferruginous shale is sometimes above, sometimes below the limestone, and sometimes takes its place. Airdrie, Muhlenburg county. Coal No. 11 is here the main coal, six feet thick, with clay parting. The black shales contain an abun- dance of beautifully preserved shells, and also scales, fins, and teeth of fishes. They are covered with a limestone bed three feet thick. Bonharbour, Daviess county, Kentucky. There is no place where No. 11 coal is so easily identified by palzeontological observations. ‘The coal about five fect thick, has an occasional clay parting, or is separa- 548 PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. ted by a thin layer of sulphuret of iron and charcoal. It is topped by the black slaby shales, with great abundance of shells, and some re- mains of fishes; and above it, has a soft calcareous rock, also full of beautifully preserved shells, all species characteristic of this coal. Near Curdsville, opposite this place, on Green river, in Henderson county, No. 11 coal has been worked, and is here called Cook’s upper coal. The coal, four feet thick, has a clay parting; its black shales are full of shells,as at Bonkarbour, and it is covered by two beds of limestone, sepa- rated by a bed of coal-dirt and fire clay, six inches thick. The infe- rior bed of limestone is full of shells, but the superior one is black and without remains of fossils. Coal No. 12. The general features of this coal recall the same ob- servations as for No. 10. Its formation has followed too near that of No. 11. I¢ is an unreliable bed, as well for its thickness as for its position. It sometimes comes so near No. 11, that it looks like a part of it, and sometimes it is found twenty or thiriy feet above it. Its palzeontological characters are well marked by an abundance of remains of fossil fishes, especially large scales, and large (mostly double) teeth. In Nos. 9 and 11, the remains of fishes belong only to very small species; in this they are much larger. The doulle teeth, found in abundance at Airdrie, are of a peculiar structure, viz: divided into two hooked points, about half an inch long, diverging from the base. Exclusive of its fossil remains, coal No. 12 is easily identified by the composition of its coal, which is mostly a dirty, rashy, coaly mat- ter, a compound of flattened Stigmaria, Calamites, and some scarce Sigillaria, well preserved in their outlines. Coal and shales are cov- ered by a black band, or bed of calcareous iron stone, passing to a black limestone, which sometimes takes its place. This limestone is not fossiliferous, s far as has yet been observed. Airdrie, Muhlenburg county, is the first, and truly the only place, where we had a good opportunity of studying No. 12 coal. It is opened here for the black band from which the material is supplied to C. H. Alexander’s furnace. The bed of coal ubout four feet, has two to three feet of coal-rash, apparently entirely formed of Calamites, Stig- ‘maria, and Sigillaria. I could not find a Lepidodendron among those vegetable remains. Below the coal-ash there is one to one and an half feet good coal. The shales, one foot thick, are parted by the PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 549 black band, which sometimes disappears, sometimes occupies the whole thickness of the shales. The black band itself does not contain any fossil remains; but at all the places where it is not formed, the shales contain, in abundance, the remains of fishes mentioned above. Besides at Airdrie, we observed this 12th coal over the limestone in the peaks of Otter, on Town’s property, Hopkins county, Kentucky, where it is a rashy coal, three to four feet thick, and has a black band parting shale, with the remains of fishes. At MeNairy’s, Mublenburg county, Kentucky, where it comes within two feet and a half of No. 11, and is a rashy coal, with black limestone between it and No. 11; opposite New Curdsville, in Henderson county, where it has only six inches coal dirt, comes to within three feet of No. 11, and has lime- stone both above and below it, and probably also at the top of Gamb- lin hill, Hopkins county, where we saw its out-crop only, in a hole full of water, which prevented closer examination. This bed is no where open in such a manner that it could be studied satisfactorily. It is indicated at other places, but always asa rash and unreliable coal. This terminates the series of local information that we were able to collect in one month of paleeontological survey in the western coal- fields of Kentucky. Perhaps the results may not be accepted as en- tirely satisfactory; but, considering the short time, and the extent of country surveyed, we think that it was hardly possible to obtain a larger amount of useful information. Not only the true vertical ex- tent or the thickness of the Coal Measures of Kentucky is at once fixed, bnt the geological level of many important stations is ascer- tained, and these may serve as points of comparison for future inves- tigation. Moreover, the first basis for the determination of the coal- fields, by palzeontological remains, is laid down in this report, and every observer may test its value, and find out every fact that can modify or consolidate it. For, though the most valuable beds of coal of Kentucky have had their essential characters pointed out in such a manner that every geologist will easily know them again every where, yet there is a great thickness of the Coal Measures that is still nearly unexplored. This part contains, wrthout doubt, the less important and less valuable veins; nevertheless, the study of coals Nos. 2, 8, 5, and 8, may be of great interest in a scientific point of view. For this the collection of all the fossil remains, plants, shells, fishes, with refer- 550 PALMONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. ence to the place where they have found, and if possible to the supposed geological level of it, will prove the most valuable contribution. I thought at first to examine, in detail, the question of the identi- ty of all the coal-fields of the Mississippi valley, including the great Apalachian and the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. But a scientific discussion would take too much space in a local report like this, and I can only offer out some general remarks, which will-at lesst explain this belief: that the western Kentucky, Illinois, and Indiana coal- fields were formed in continuity with the great Apalachian basin, and the anthracite fields of Pennsylvania. The comparison will be bet- ter understood by looking at the description of the lower coals, as it is given on pp. 94 and 98 of Lesley’s excellent Manual of coal. His coal A, a thin bed, the first above the conglomerates, is sometimes present in western Ohio, as at Nelsonville, where it is about two feet thick, and in Virginia, as on the great Kanawha, near Charlestown, where it is eigteen inches thick; but, nevertheless, it is scarcely seen or penetrated in the borings for salt. As the system of the lower coals is less developed at the west, a circumstance easily explained by our general remarks, this bed of coal, when formed in the eastern coal- fields of Kentucky, is only a thin layer. In a shaft of the Old Distil- lery mines, at Caseyville, this bed is said to have been reached, and found to be one to two feet thick. But truly we could not find any reliable account of this. Coal B, of Lesley’s Manual, viz: our coal No. 1, B, is in the west- ern Kentucky coal-fields, as well as in Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsyl- vania, a most reliable vein, and undoubtedly the best of the whole se- ries, considering the extent of the surface where it becomes exposed. It thickens to the east, and in the anthracite fields-it forms the Mam- moth vein, and many others of the largest veins which have been worked. Asa proof that its characters are everywhere the same, I quote a few lines of my paleeontological report prepared and delivered in 1882, for the Geological State Survey of Pennsyivania: “As soon as we come to the lower strata, the presence of large vege- tables becomes apparent, first in the great quantity of Sligmarta abounding in the shales of the Diainond and Primrose veins, then in the Lepidodendron, and some large ferns which distinguish the Mammoth vein. This vein especially merits to be mentioned for its peculiar flora. The roof slates, of gray color, ordinarily charged with nodules PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 651 of iron, have preserved the impressions of fossil plants ina very good state. The ferns, when present, belong to the largest species. With the Lepidodendron and their fruits, found i in great abundance at Wilkes- barre, Carbondale, Minersville, Tamaqua, and Summit Lehigh, the ferns mostly seen in these low veins are Ale/hopteris Serlii, with its near relative Alethopteris (Pecopteris) lonchitica, and also with Neurop- teris hirsuta and Neuropteris Clarkson, Lsq’x. The fruits and needles of Lepidodendron, viz: Lepidostr obus and Lepidophillum, ave also very abundant in the ‘Mammoth vein of the anthracite, and since we did not find any specimens of these fruits any where else, viz: in any other bed above, their presence may be relied upon as a true character of the lowest beds of the coal basin in general, (p. 8 to 9, MSS.) “We have already alluded to the identity of the great Apalachian coal with the anthracite formation, asserting that this identity is espe- cially striking by comparison of the flora of the different strata. “The lowest bed of the basin (our coal No. 1, B,) rests on the con- glomerates, and crops out at Summit Portage, where we collected some Lepidodendron and Lepidophillum; at Johnstown, where the black slates of the roof are charged with Lepidostrobus, especially with Lepidostrobus brevifolius, Lsq’ x., and also with Lépidodendr on, at ‘Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, where the ‘shales abound with the same plants, and also with Pecopteris lonchitica, and some Sigillaria. There is also there plenty of fruits—Curdiocarpon, Carpolithes—as at the low vein of Trevorton, Penn. The last place where we had opportunity to ex- amine this vein, so rich in fine fossil vegetables, is on the great Ka- nawha river, three miles above Charlestown, where we found the roof shales covered with Alethopteris Serlit, and with some fine Lepidoden- dron, and Lepidostrobus in ebundance. From this we shall necessari- ly be permitted to draw this conclusion: that this vein of coal, pre- serving so well it characteristic fossil plants, and at so great distances, was formed at the same time, and under the same circumstances, as well in the whole extent of the great Apalachian coal as in the anthra- cite coal-fields.” (Pages 10, 11, MSS.) This is nearly a repetition of what we have said about the lowest bed of coal, viz: No. 1, B, of the western coal-fields of Kentucky; and for this basin, also, we must necessarily draw the same conclusions as above. ~The correspondence of No. 2 coal with cannel coal C, of Pennsyl- nia, of our No. 4 with the Pomeroy vein of Ohio, and with the Gates and Salem veins of the anthracite, at Pottsville, as also the relation of No. 6 ccal with the Steiger’s bed of Athens, Ohio, have been already and sufficiently pointed out. 552 PAL NTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. The barren measures, from the Pomeroy coal up to the great Pitts- burg vein, are perhaps not as well developed in the western coal-fields of Kentucky asin the great Apalachian basin; but, following our general remarks, all the strata have necessarily thinned somewhat westwards. Nevertheless, the space occupied in Kentucky by these barren measures, is three hundred feet thick, which is as much as in some places of Pennsylvania and Ohio. It is true that the measures are not entirely barren in western Kentucky, since there is a coal, No. 5, four feet thick, at ninety-five feet above No.4. But the same vein is well developed in Ohio, near Athens, at one hundred feet above the Pomeroy coal, and in Pennsylvania, where the barren measure take their greatest developement; the same coal, one foot thick, is general- ly found at about fifty feet above the Mahoning sandstone, which rest upon the Pomeroy coal, and is seventy feet thick. This great sand- stone, which is sometimes a bed of conglomerates, follow westward the same decreasing progression as the true conglomerates of the coal meas- ures. Nos. 6 and 7 coal, generally thin beds, have, in the western coal- fields, taken the place of the limestone of Pennsylvania, according to this principle, that where a quiet water is high, and the marine element predominating, a limestone may be formed, when at the same time, in more shallow marshes, the plants will grow, and their remains make a deposit of coal or shales; for it is evident that though the whole of the Coal Measures appears to have been horizontal, at least at some periods of formation, there has been, in different places, some depres- sions, forming lakes in the peat growing marshes, and that these lakes had to be filled by sand or by formation of shales, or of limestone, before they could again be covered with vegetation, and consequently with coal. If the examination of the fossils of No. 8 coal, shows it to be the true coeval of the Pittsburg vein, we have, from it to the highest point of the Coal Measures, as far as they have been surveyed in the United States, another striking analogy in the position of the veins of coal, and their respective distance in both the coal-fields of western Ken- tucky and Pennsylvania. Admitting the coal marked three feet five inches, in the great limestone of Pennsylvania, as our No. 11, with which it is in perfect concordance by its fossils, and admitting that our PALZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 553 No. 12 is either united with it or not formed as in western Kentucky, we find in Pennsylvania, according to Lesley’s description of the upper Coal Measures, a bed of coal, one foot thick above the great limestone, covered by two thick formations of sandstone, one fifteen feet, the other thirty-five feet, separated by shales, and a thin bed of limestone— the whole thickness of these strata being sixty-five to seventy feet. In Kentucky, between 12 coal, and the first coal above, there is nine- ty-five feet of sandstone and blue slate; and from this coal, which, for convenience sake, we will cali No. 13, there is thirty-six feet of shales and limestone, to a five feet black slate, which contains some coal, and then thirty-seven feet ef brown slate and limestone, to a bed of coal, (say No. 14,) which is thirteen inches thick. In Pennsylvania, we find, in the same space, fifty feet of sandstone and shales, to a coal eighteen inches thick, and then fifty-five feet of limestone and shales, to another coal one foot thick, covered by four feet of brown shales, and twenty feet of sandstonc. And more, if we count the whole thick- ness of the strata from the highst vein of coal in Pennsylvania to the Pittsburg vein, we find it to be marked by Lesley at four hundred feet, and the distance from our 14 coal to No. 8, or Well coal, is nearly exactly the same, viz: three hundred and ninety-five feet. Truly this extraordinary concordance of the Coal Measures, at ma- ny hundred miles distance, is a very remarkable geological fact; and may be accepted asa proof, not only of coevity, but of continuity of the now separated coal-fields. It may be said that a coevity of formation would, perhaps, call in existence the same formations, on both separate basins, as well as on a continuous one. This is possible, but there is notning to prove it. On the contrary, we find, on the true borders of the great Apalachian coal-fields, viz: on its eastern and northern limits, many peculiar ac- cidents of formation, great irregularity of thickness in the strata, dis- tortions, cavities, subdivision of the bed of coal, which shoty the action of the sea on its shores, where the sand is unequally distributed, and where some small basins are closed and separated from the main one ; aud also on the western borders of the Apalachian, as well as on the east- ern limits of the western Kentucky coal-fields, the veins of coal, and even the intermediate strata, have a remarkable uniformity of thick- ness. From Massillon, Ohio, to the Ohio river, at Nelsonsville and 70 554 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. other places, coal No. 1, B, is from four to six feet thick, and along the eastern borders of the Illinois coal-field, as at Hawesville and Breckinridge, the same coal is four to five feet in thickness. As far as I have been able to extend my explorations till now, I have not seen any part of the coal-fields, east of the Mississippi, which give indica- tions of having?been separated from the general coal-fields at the time of their formation, except the anthracite basins of Pennsylvania; and I still think, that even these were connected by channels with the general basin, and that these channels have been often obstructed. ‘hat the high and quiet water of the sea has never covered them, is evident, from the total absence of limestone and shells in their strata, and also from the great thickness and the subdivision of the beds of coal; while in the general basin, the growth of the vegetation of the coal was sometimes stopped by the slow invasion of marine water, in the enclosed marshes of the anthracite fields, the growth of the vege- table materials was continuous fora longer period, and stopped only by the invasion of the sand brought upon them by a greater depression of the whole surface. In this case, we may find the fossil plants to represent the same species in the beds of coevel formation; but these species may be distributed in another manner, viz: appear identical in two or three veins close to each other, when in the general basin, they belong to a single vein. The case is observable near Pottsville, Wilkes- barre, and a few other places, and can be explained only by supposing that while the coal-field was submerged, some disturbance has strewn abed of sand upon the already growing marshes of the borders, and that the vegetation beginning again, before a general change by de- pression or upheaval, the plants were of the same species as the former. I still persist in the affirmation of my report to the Pennsylvania geo- logical survey, that the Salem and the Gates veins, as well as the Black and the Lewis veins around Pottsville, belong to the same bed of ‘coal. Butif this assertion should be proved a mistake, the identi- ty of the fossils of those veins could not be explained but by the above supposition. But, it is asked: if the upraising of the lower formations, which has caused the coal-fields to be separated by about two hundred miles of Devonian and Silurian strata, was posterior to the formation of the coal, what has become of the upraised Coal Measures, and where is PALEONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 555 the proof that they have been destroyed by subsequent erosion? The proof is found in the quaternary formations, all along the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers. The loam deposited by these rivers is some- times mixed with broken and rolled pieces of coal; there are even some deposits of alluvial rolled coal, or pebbles of coal, heaped in strata in such a way that they have been taken, by unexperienced ob- servers, for true coal beds. I had opportunity to examine one at low water of the Ohio river, below Vevay, Ind., in an alluvial formation, just upon the Lower Silurian Measures, and I have heard of some oth- ers. But here we must close this already too lengthened discussion, and let the reader draw his own conclusions from the facts enumerated above, and also apply the general rules to the different localities open for his examination. There are, no doubt, some phenomena of the formation of the coal that are not yet satisfactorily explained, and some local accidents which will baffle every effort toward a generalization. But the science of the coal is still new, especially in the United States, where the coal-fields have been till now regarded only as true mines of wealth, very good for working, but scarcely worth a careful scien- tific study. 556 Fia, Fie. Fie. Fia. Fic. Fic. Fic. Fia. Fre. Fie. sl 10. PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Explanation of the Plates. PLATE VI. . Sphenopteris tridactylites, Brongt? Our species, found at Union Come pany mines, somewhat differs from the European species, by its long- er tertiary pinnules and its broader punctulate rachis; it is: probably a peculiar species; 1a shows a tertiary pinnule; twice the natural size. . Neuropteris flexuosa, Sternb. Giger’s vein, Greenup county, Ky. . Pecopteris lonchitica, Brongt. Upper part of a frond. The secondary pinne like @ are mostly found. Low coal. Union Company mines, &e. , Neuroptéris hirsuta, Lsqx., with stem. The leaflets are mostly found separate. Common in the whole extent of Coal Measures. Very variable in its outlines. ; PLATE VII. . Lepidodendron politum, spec. nova. Gencral scars oval lanceolate pointed curved at both ends with broad inflated, scarcely ribbed mar- gins. Impressions rhomboidal, obtuse above, narrowed at the base, marked with three obsolete points; appendages two, united to the margin; no medial line nor wrinkles on the smoth scars. Union Com- pany mines, Ky. : Stigmaria ficoides, Sternb., with flattened leaves as it is ordinarily found in the coal and the shales. Fig. 2a shows part of around leaf as preserved in the sandstone. . Lepidostrobus. Low coal. Bell’s mines, Hawesville, &c. . Sigillaria obovata, Lsq’x. MSS. in Pennsylvania report. Low coal. . Cross section of a small Lepidostrobus. . Lepidophyllum crevifolium, Lsq’x. MSS. Pennsylvania report, pl. 23, fig. 6. Lepidophyllum lanceolatum, Brgt. These three last species are general- ly found in the low coal. . Carpolithes plati-marginatus, Lsq’x. MSS. in Pennsylvania repert, pl. ' 93, fig. 12. Low coal. Union Company mines, dc. . Carpolithes bicuspidatus, Sternb., common in the low coal of Kentucky. Calamites tuberculosus, Gutb. Rash coal, Kentucky. PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT COAL MEASURE MOLLUSCA EDWARD T. COX, ASSISTANT GEOLOGIST. REPORT. TO DR DAVID DALE OWEN, Geologist of the State of Kentucky. Sir: In accordance with your instructions I accompanied Mr. Leo Lesquereux in an excursion for the purpose of examining the coal field in the western part of Kentucky, with the view to collect paleeontolog- ical data, that might greatly aid in identifying the different veins of coal, one with another, throughout the counties embraced in its extent; especially by means of the organic remains found in the roof-shales and accompanying rocks. The merited celebrity of Mr. Lesquereux as a fossil Botanist, and the important labor which he had bestowed upon the coal plants of Pennsylvania and Ohio, made his selection for a similar work in Ken- tucky, the very best it was possible to make. In connection with Mr. Lesquereux, I was especially instructed to pay attention to the fossil mollusca, and collect every possible evidence for identity from that source. This mode of establishing the position of coal beds has only been practically pursued by Mr. Lesquereux in this country ; and a beginning is now being made, for the first time, to connect with the flora the testimony of the shells—an addition much needed in western Kentucky, on account of the great scarcity of the former, and abundance of the latter. Our investigations, for identity, commencing with coal No. 1, B, at the bottom of the section in the first chapter of your report, and ter- minating with coal No. 12, includes, in all the strata, a vertical thick- ness of about eight hundred feet. It must not be supposed that these members include the whole thickness of the western coal field; though they mark, probably, the limits of the profitably working coals, there are one or two thin seams below No. 1, B, which, with a thick sand- stone, usually pebbly, with underlying shale, make together one hun- dred feet or more; whilst above No. 12, there area number of thin veins with intervening shales, limestone, and sand-rock, in all up- wards of five hundred feet, making the whole measures in the western 560 PALZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. part of the state from (1,400) fourteen hundred to (1,500) fifteen hundred feet. The thin veins above No. 12, are not wanting in distinctive organic remains, and collections had already been made from some of these higher beds, amongst which are seveal new species. They have been omitted for the present, as being of the least importance, and because they require additional study. In Mr. Lesquereux’s report will be found an extremely interesting account of the formation of fossil fuel, and the equivalency of the various beds of coal throughout the field of our examination. It re- mains only necessary for me, on this occasion, to refer to each vein its peculiar fossil shells, so far as they have been ascertained. It may be asked, how came marine shells to be imbedded in the roof-shales, if the coal has been formed in fresh water 2 They follow- ed the influx of the sea after subsidence of the land, and are such as usually live in shallow or brackish water, belonging to the phytiferous (vegetable feeders,) and carniverous orders. The salt water gradually killed out the coal flora—the last remains of which mixed with alge, became entangled in the sediment of the ocean, and served to supply bitumen, with which the dark shales that usually form the roof of the coal are so frequently charged. Our observations go to show that wherever we found fossil remains of the molusca abundant in the roof-shale, coal plants are rarely found, whilst remains of marine plants are usually abundant. ' COAL NO. 1, B. This is the lowest workable coal in the western basin, varying in thickness from three to six feet, and characterized by a solitary molus- ca* Lingula umbonata nob., plate X, fig. 4. It is opened and worked by the Union Coal and Iron Company, one and a half miles below Carrsville, in Livingston county, where it is an outlier, and the most southern workable coal in the state. This vein has been opened and worked by several companies along Tradewater river, in Crittenden county.t It is most extensively worked on the property of Col. John Bell, where it is from three and a half to six feet thick, and known as the “Bell coal.” Another opening was made into this vein on the'same *For the flora see Mr. Leo Lesquereux’s report. 4See report of Dr. D. D. Owen, State Geologist. PALZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 561 property, about three quarters of a mile farther from Tradewater, by Mr. Cook, whose name it bears. In Union county it is mined by the Messrs. Casey’s; out-crops near the old distillery back of Caseyville, also on the property of the Ken- tucky Coal Company, and various other localities in the same county. On the eastern boundary of the basin it proves to be the main Hawes- ville and Breckinridge coal vein, at each of which localities we found the identical Lingula umbonata In the shales of the roof at Hawes- ville, where we had an excellent opportunity to examine, they were found in the greatest abundance. The remaining figures on plate X belong to the Cephalopoda division of the mollusca, and were collected on a previous occasion by the sur- vey, at Nolin Iron Works, Edmonson county. They are new, and oc- cupy a low position in the Coal Measures, i. e., about one hundred feet above the conglomerate. Very little has yet been done towards making openings into the oth- er coals below No. 9, and what old workings have been undertaken are now mostly filled up, so that but little opportunity has been afforded for making collections from these beds. The only animal remains as yet found in them is from No. 7, or “Black-band vein,” a thin seam of coal over-layed by a black bituminous, ferruginous carbonate of lime in thin bands, and these are fins, scales, and teeth of fish, that have not yet been determined. This vein, which is only noticed on account of its ferruginous calcareous black-band roof, from one and a half to two anda half feet in thickness, is best developed on the property of Mr. Alfred Towns, in Hopkins county, and usually contains from twenty to twenty-five per cent. of metallic iron. Its is also seen on the proper- ty of the Saline Mining Company, Gallatin county, Illinois, where it contains the same description of fish remains. Its position is about one hundred and thirty feet below No. 9. COAL NO. 9. This is the main working coal in the western part of the state, and is usually characterised by an abundance of fossil mollusca; amongst the most numerous are those figured on plate IX: Avicula recta-late- raria, A. acosta, Solemamya soleniformis, Nautilus decoratus, and Pro- ductus muricatus. Besides these there are Mucula Hamerii, Nucula, species undetermined, Pecten, species undetermined, Pleurotomaria 71 562 PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Grayvillensis, Loxonema, species undetermined, Orthoceratite, species undetermined, Chonetes mesoloba, (variety small, and prominently lobed,) Productus equicostatus, and Bellerophon carbonarious. This Bellerophon, which we propose to call B. carbonarious, has generally been refered to B. Urei, Flem., by western Paleeontologists—a con- clusion with which we cannot agree; not from a desire to create a new Species, but with a view to a proper understanding of the true geolo- gical position of the shells of the Coal Measures. The B. Urei, accor- ding to L. De Koninck, has a vertical range from the silurian to the carboniferous beds, whereas the B. carbonarious has not been found to range lower than the middle of the coal basin, and is only fully rep- resented in the upper part. It certainly approaches very close to L. De Koninck’s description of the B. Urei, (Description Animaux Fos- siles, page 356, pl. xxx, fig. 4,) and may possibly be a variety, but cannot be considered identical. That there are several varieties or species referred to this shell, is evident from the description of the following authors here cited: Capt. Portlock, Geology of Londonderry, page 400; Mr. Phillips’ Geology of Yorkshire, page 231 ; M’ Coy’s Description of British Paleozoic fossils in the Geological Museum of Cambridge, page 555; all of which differ materially. It is referred to B. Urei by Norwoodand Pratien ; Notice of fossils from the carbonif- erous series of the western states ; Journal Acad. Nat. Sci., June, 1855; page 75, plate [X., fig. 6. The original of this figure is in my cabinet, and was loaned to them for representation, being at that time the only perfect specimen known. Ian sorry to say, from some over-sight, for it was in the hands of a most excellent artist and esteemed friend, this figure gives a very incorrect idea of the shell; it exhibits but two- thirds of the true number of the spiral strize—having only fifteen, whereas, there should have been twenty ; (from the examination of a large number, they are found to range from 19 to 25 ;) the mouth, as well as the general contour, is essentially wrong. None of the various authors who have described the B. Urei mention the lateral expansion of the mouth into ears, a feature very decided in our shell. It also differs in having fewer spiral strize, and by the more rapid increase of the last whorl. From the examination of several hnndred good spe- cimens, the average number of spiral strize appears to be twenty-one, always, even in the youngest individual, terminating on the inferior PALHUNTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 563 half of the last whorl, and have not been found to exceed twenty-five; whereas L. De Koninck reports on the B. Urei, from thirty-six to thirty-eight. Fe ams ya's of an inch; proportional increase of the last whorl 41, to £2, of an inch; nee the wings of the mouth ; transverse diameter of the mouth .44, of an inch. Remains of fishes, that have not yet been determined, are also found in the shales of this coal. COAL NO. ll. This is the next coal in the series, in which we found the remains of mollusca. For the most characteristic, see plate vut., figs. 1 to 11, and plate 1x, fig. 1. They are as follows: Pecten Providencesis, Loxvonema regularis, Chimnitzia parva, Pleurotomaria Bonharborensis, P. depressa, Arca carbonaria, Gervillia longispina, Plicatula striato« costata, Myalina pernaformis, Cardinia (?) fragihs, Macrocheilus, grachs, Orthis resupinoides, Pecten, species undetermined, Avicula rectalateraria, (not so abundant as in No. 9,) Loxonema Hallit, Loxo- nema, species nudetermined, Macrocheilus inhabilis, Macrocheilus, spe- cies undetermined, Productus muricatus, rare, P. Rogersit, P. equicos- tatus, Athyris subtilita, large and abundant, Cardium, species undeter- mined, Spirifer Meusebachanus, Solenimya, species undetermined, Nu- cula, species undetermined, Orthis, species undetermined, Orthoceratite, species undetermined, Grifithides, species undetermined. This coal is usually separated into two members, by a clay parting from one to four inches in thickness, and is overlayed by a limestone. The upper part of this bed of coal is sometimes cannel, and the lower bituminous. It is best developed in Hopkins county—where it at- tains a thickness of nine feet—on the line of the Henderson and Nashville Railroad. On the mining property of Edward and William Hawes, at Hawes- ville, Hancock county, No. 11 is found near the top of the hill, a few rods west of their entry into the main Hawesville coal, No. 1,B; well characterised by its peculiar fossils, and proves a remarkable thinning out of the measures near the eastern boundary of the basin. The ver- tical space between the two is here only two hundred and ten (210) feet, but may be somewhat increased, by the existence of an at pres- ent unknown fault. 564 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. COAL NO. 11. This is the highest coal that we had an opportunity to examine in the series. It is characterised by the remains of fishes, not yet de- termined, and a small ordicula, of which we found no specimen suffi- ciently perfect for description. . As a full history of the coals, from the bottom to the top of the series, may be found in your report, and that of Mr. Lesquereux, it has been deemed unnecessary to repeat it here. There will also be seen, by a reference to the above reports, a demonstration of the fact, that the most persistent veins throughout the basin are Nos. 1B., 9, and 11—they having been found at every locality where there is suf- ficient thickness of the measures to contain them. For a better understanding of the fossil shells found associated with these coals, I herewith submit the annexed descriptions, and accompa- nying plates, Nos. VIII, IX. and X. For the beautiful and accurate representation of the fossil shells on these plates, we are indebted to Mr. John Chappellsmith. The importance of the facts established by the survey of the coal- fields of Kentucky, cannot be over estimated. It has developed the various seams, and given characters by which the most important may at all times be known, and having established the identity of one, in any part of the basin, the relative position of the others may easily be known, by reference to the section in the first chapter of your report in this volume. Next to agriculture, coal is the most important element of a coun- try’s prosperity and wealth. Its importance is just beginning to be felt in the west, and will increase with the constantly diminishing for- est. Asa fuel, it is the most convenient and economical, and no country can successfully compete in manufacturing without a cheap supply. It is the rich and well wrought coal-fields of England that enables her to maintain a supremacy in manufacturing, over the world; deprived of the coal, her importance as a nation would soon be lost. In the British Islands not less than fifteen million tons of coal are annually raised, affording employment, in the mining operations, to more than one hundred and fifty thousand people. More than one third of this amount is derived from the Newcastle basin, embracing a superficial area of seven hundred and fifty square miles; whereas, in western Kentucky the coal-field contains more than three thousand PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 565 square miles, with an average thickness of all the coal seams about equal to those of the Newcastle district. The superiority of coal as a fuel will be better understood when we consider, that one square mile of forest, containing twenty thousand trees, averaging two cubic yards of solid wood, would be equal to one acre of coal six feet thick. One hundred pounds of coal, occupying about one and a half square feet, will evaporate 1,200 pounds of water, equal to 150 gallons; while 100 pounds of well dried wood, occupy- ing more than double this space, will evaporate only 700 pounds of water, equal to about 88 gallons; and six gallons of water evaporated in an hour is equal to a horse power. HE. T. COX, Assistant Geologist. 566 PALAONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. A description of some of the most characteristic shells, of the principal coal seams in the western basin of Kentucky, by E. T. Cox, Assistant Geologist. PECTEN PROVIDENCESIS. Coz. (Plate VIII. fig. 1, left valve natural size.) Semi-circular; as broad as high; nearly equilateral; left valve slight- ly convex; about thirty-three broad prominent ribs, of unequal width, and irregularly fluted; radiate from the beak to the circumference; crossed below the disk by two well defined bands, marking stages of growth. Anterior ear of the valve under description is wanting, but that of the right valve beneath, is in part exposed, finely ribbed, and crossed by concentric bands; inferior ear finely ribbed, crossed by fimbriating folds, curved outward from the beak. Rostral angle 95° ; height 3.22, inches; width 3.,22, inches. Its size and broad fluted ribs renders it easily distinguished from other species. Position and locality. Found by the topographical assistant, Sidney S. Lyon, in the limestone which overlays the main coal, No. 11, at the town of Providence, Hopkins county, Kentucky. Fragments are somewhat numerous, but it,is difficult to obtain them in as perfect a state of preservation as the one figured. LOXONEMA REGULARIS. Coz. (P. VIII, fig. 2, natural size.) Elongated; acutely conical; volutions ten; regularly enlarging; con- vex; covered with fine transverse strise; convex in the direction of the spire; sigmoidal on the last whorl; suture small, slightly impressed; body whorl about one half the whole length; colamella lip elongated, slightly reflected; outer lip thin; mouth about twice as long as broad; spiral angle 35°; length 2.1% inches; width .8), inch. It most nearly resembles L. Halli, Norwood and Patten, Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci. June, 1855, but differs in being larger, less acute, and more convex on the volutions. It was found by Sidney S. Lyon, Topo- graphical Assistant, and is converted into pyrites of a bright yellow color and metallic lustre, and is in a fine state of preservation. PALMONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 567 Position and locality. Rare, in a dark bituminous soft stratum of pyritiferous carbonate of lime; about one foot above the black shale forming the roof of the Bonharbour coal, No. 11, Daviess county, Kentucky. CHIMNITZIA PARVA. Coz. (Pl. VIII, fig. 3, enlarged; 3a natural size.) Small; acute; volutions about six; very ventricose; marked with strong transverse ribs, slightly curved in the direction of the spire, and separated by a deep furrow as wide as the ribs; body whorl occu- pies about one third the entire length of the shell; columella lip slightly prolonged; mouth subcircular; length .4% inch; width 25 inch. Position and locality. Occurs in the dark bituminous, pyritiferous, calcareous stratum over the shale roof of Bonharbour coal, No. 11, Daviess county, Kentucky. PLEUROTOMARIA BONHARBORENSIS. Coz. (Pl. VIII, fig. 4, enlarged; 4a natural size.) Small; conical; a little longer than wide; volutions six; acutely convex; marked witha well defined concave band; distinct on all the whorls, and crossed with fine striee; convex in the direction of the spire; ten to twelve spiral lines on the under part of the last whorl, diminishing to two or three on the preceding whorls; crossed by fine transverse strize, rather strongly curved with the convexity in the di- rection of the mouth, giving a beautiful reticulation on the under part of the last whorl, and ornamenting the preceding whorls, on the upper part, with two to three spiral rows of small tubercles; spiral angle about 75°; length .,2,% inch; width .43, inch. It differs from the P. Grayvillensis, Norwood and Pratten, Jour. Acad. Nat. Sci., June, 185, pl. ix, fig. 7, by its ornaments, and in being more acute. Position and locality. Abundant, in the roof shales of the Bon- harbour coal No. 11, Daviess county, Kentucky. ARCA CARBONARIA. Coz. (Pl. VII, fig. 5, natural size.) Transversly elongated; beaks not elevated; anterior extremity short; obtusely rounded; tumid at the umbo, from which a slight ob- 568 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. lique mesial sinus extends to the base, where it becomes profound; base emarginated; hinge area straight, almost forming a right angle with the posterior margin which is nearly straight; slightly sinuate above; obtusely rounded below; upper posterior part obliquely truncated; surface covered with concentric lines marking stages of growth, and fine radiating ribs, ipa on the disk about seven in one and a half lines; width 1.745, inches, height 5°, inch. Position and locality. Rather abundant in the limestone over the main coal No. 11, at Providence, Hopkins county; also in a limestone over an equivalent coal on the property of Edward and William Hawes, near Hawesville, Hancock county, Kentucky. GERVILLIA LONGISPINA. (Coz. (Pl. VIII, fig. 6, left valve natural size.) Lunate; hinge area straight; posterior ear defined by a deep sinus; hollowed out on its lateral margin, and terminated by a long spine; beak depressed, pointed; anterior margin and base together form a semicircle; eliptically pointed at the posterior extremity; posterior border slightly concave, from which rises an abrupt ridge, gradually declining to the base and anterior border; anterior ear wanting; sur- face covered with fine strize and Seng marks of ero, length from - beak to posterior extremity 1.;43, inches, height .%3; inch.. This re- markable species has no analogy with any other with “hich we are acquainted. A portion of the spine has been restored from fragments found in the rock. Position and locality. Not uncommon in the limestone which over- lays the main coal No. 11, at Providence, Hopkins county, Kentucky. PLICATULA STRIATO-COSTATA. Coz. (PI. VIII, fig. 7; right valve natural size.) Triagonal; inequilateral; right valve moderately convex; from nine to ten large elevated ribs arise irregularly below the beak, increasing in size to the circumferance, separated from one another by deep furrows, crossed about one-third the length above the base by an irregular con- centric groove, below which, on the anterior side, the ribs are slightly bent forward, giving the appearance of having been broken; above this are two other rather indistinct bands; surface and ribs covered with fine irregular thread-like strize, increasing by intercalation, rising from PALAZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 569 each side, and terminate on the summit of the ribs, numbering, at three lines from the beak, sixteen in the space of two lines; base se- micircular, crenulated; height 1.28, inches; width 1.25, inches, Position and locality. From the limestone over the main Provi- dence coal, No. 11, Hopkins county, Kentucky. MYALINA PERNAFORMIS. Coz. (Pl. VII, fig. 8; right valve natural size.) Sub-quadrate; inequilateral; beak pointed, projecting beyond, and moderately curved over the cardinal border; cardinal border nearly straight; anterior margin and base rounded; posterior margin straight; near which a prominent ridge gradually slopes to the front and base; surface covered with strong concentric, somewhat fimbriating lines of growth; length 1.,°, inches; width .,°% inch. Position and locality. Common in the limestone over the main coal No. 11, at Providence, Hopkins county, Kentucky. PLEUROTOMARIA DEPRESSA. Coz. (Pl. VIII, fig. 19, 10a; natural size.) Small; lenticular; depressed; about five volutions scarcely eleva- ted; nearly flat above; defined by a row of acutely pointed tuber- cles, not so wide as the intervening notch; last whorl obtusely round- ed below, bordered by a sharp edge, which has a narrow depressed band above, only visible when the implanted tubercles are removed; ornamented on the upper and lower side with obsolete lines of growth bent backwards; umbilicus shallow; mouth notched; columella and outer lip rounded; height .,33, inch; width .5., inch; spiral angle 130°. This species may at first easily be mistaken for P. spherulata, Conrad, (P. coronula Hall; Stansbury’s expedition to the Great Salt Lake, 1852, page 413, pl. 4, fig. 6,) but is much more depressed, and the angle of the last whorl more acute. The tubercles not so numer- ous, and less elevated. Position and locality. Common in the shale forming the roof of No. 11 coal, at Bonharbour, Daviess county, and Airdrie, Muhlenburg county, Kentucky. 72 570 PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. CARDINIA? FRAGILIS. Coz. (PI. VIII, fig. 9; left valve natural size.) Shell very thin; transversely ovate; beak scarcely elevated; an- terior slope slightly hollowed; anterior extremity short, rounded be- low; base and posterior side obtusely rounded; hinge line straight, slightly truncated behind — beak ; surface aks with broad con- centric furrows; height .2,2, inch ; width 1.,2,°, inches. It is difficult, from the ocr. preserved specimens now collected, to determine the genus with certainty ; but believing it to be a char- acteristic shell, have placed it conditionally amongst the cardinia. When well preserved the valves may be found ornamented with fine concentric strize. Position and locality. Abundant in the black shale, which some- times forms the roof of No. 11 coal, at Airdrie, Mublenburg county, Kentucky. MACROCHEILUS GRACILIS. Coz. (Pl. VILI, fig. 11, enlarged; fig. 11 a, natural size.) Small} conical; about six volutions ; convex; suture small; last whorl half the length of entire shell ; eoinmiells lip Sone slight- ly refected; mouth subovate; length 4%, neh; width .45, inch; spiral angle 56°. It differs from UM. acutus, Sow. by the more rapid inerease of the whorls, prolougation of the columella lip, and less rotundity of the mouth. Though the specimen under description is most likely a young shell, it cannot be confounded in any stage of developement with its cogenitors. Position and locality, Common in the shale over No. 11 coal, Bon- harbor, Daviess county, Kentucky. ORTHIS RESUPINOIDES. Con. ; (Pi. IX, fig. 1, end view, natural size; fig. 1a, entering valve; fig. 16, profile.) Hinge line straight; less than the width of the shell ; cardinal area. well marked, gradually sloping back on the receiving valve; large angular foramen ; both valves covered with fine thread-like striee, radi-- ating from the beaks to the circumference, numbering on the disk thir- teen in .7/;% of an inch, crossed by fimbriating lines marking stages of growth; obsolete on the umbo; well marked and more numerous from the base for one third the length; receiving valve moderately convex ; PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL. SURVEY. 571 greatest depth at the umbo; beak small, acute, elevated above and gradually sloping, with a slight depression to the sides ; entering valve remarkably ventricose, and a little longer than the receiving valve ; greatest depth at the disk ; avery obscure shallow sinus is perceptible, running from the rostrum to the disk, where it is lost or obliterated by the crushed condition of the base of the shell; surface ornamented with five or six broken spines, two lines in diameter and about the same height, and seveial scars of missing spines; beak very tumid, acutely terminated, slightly incurved, moderately arched on the car- dinal margin; sides obtusely rounded, broad and bahia! marked by rugose fimbriating lines of increment; width 1.%5, inches; length ae aio inches; hinge line 1.,°%, inches; depth of receiving me psy inch ; oo of entering valve .,2,5, ; width of cardinal area . inch; depth .=%% inch. Though several authors have suggested the appearance of scars left by spines, on some species of orthis; this is believed to be the first specimen of the genus upon which they have actually been found attached. The great convexity of the entering valve, the obtuseness of both valves at their lateral border, and the greater prolongation of the en- tering valve, distinguishes this species from the O. resupinata, (Mart. sp.,) to which it is most nearly related. Position and locality. From the siliceous micaceous shale forming the roof of the upper coal, No. 11, at Mr. Hawes’ mine, Hawesville, Hancock county, Kentucky. AVICULA RECTA-LATERAREA. Coz. (PI. IX, fig. 2, right valve natural size.) A little higher than broad; inequilateral; slightly oblique; covered with numerous radiating ribs, increasing in number by the intercala- tion of new ones, occasionally by dichotomy; nearly as high as broad; a little wider than the space which separates them from one another; anterior ear extends to the lateral border, with which it nearly forms a Tight angle; posterior ear a little shorter than the anterior, is not ter- minated by an angle, but by a rounded and well defined by a notch at its base; umbo slightly tumid, crossed by irregular concentric wrinkles; surface and ears covered with fine striee, and fimbriating lines of in- _srement; anterior side rectalineal; base and posterior side obtusely 572 PAL/ONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. mounted hinge area ie ie a little narower than the shell; height 25 of an inch; width 45, of aninch; anterior ear 4°, of an inch ; posterior ear .,2.%, of an inch. It iseasily distinguished from A. papyracea, Sow., with which it has been confounded, by the absence of a notch on the side, at the ex- tremity of the anterior ear, and from the A. subpapyracea, De Ver, with which it is more nearly related, by its less obliquity, straight an- terio-lateral margin, wrinkles on the umbo, and simple ribs. Position and locality. It is most usually found converted into yel- low pyrites, and in great abundance in the black shale forming the roof of No. 9 coal, at the Kentucky Coal Company’s and Curlew mines, Union county, Kentucky, and in the equivalent beds of Gallatin coun- ty, Illinois. A species, which we have not been able to distingnish from this, occurs also, but not as abundant, in coal No. 11, at “‘ Thompson’s vein,” at Curlew mines, Union county, ane at Bonharbour, Daviess county, Kentucky. AVICULA ACOSTA. Cox. (Pl. IX, fig 3; right valve natural size.) Small; inequilateral; very oblique; sub-elliptical; wings termina- ting in small acute angles; anterior half as broad as the shell; pos- terior very small; surface and wings covered with fine concentric striz ; no ribs; height 44; of an inch; width 4%, of an inch cardi- nal border .,3,%, of an inch. Position and locality. This small and fragile species is found in great abundance in the roof shales of No. 9 coal, in Union county, Kentucky, and equivalent beds, Gallatin county, Illinois, and appears to be characteristic of this vein, not having jet been found in any other position. } NAUTILUS DECORATUS. Coz. ¢Pl. IX, fig. 4, profile natural size; fig. 4 ¢, portion of the same showing, septum and siphuncle; fig. 4b, outline of the septu. Discoidal; whorls two and a half, not embracing, increasing in width in the proportion of .3,%; to .7)5 of an inch; obtusely rounded on the periphery; sides slightly convex; deeply plicated, forming elevated ridges, one to each septa, and curved in the same direction; a depres- sion in their centre produces two rows of small tubercles, more promi- PAL/ONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 573 nent on the last than preceding whorls, most decided on the outer edge; septu along the central third of the periphery slightly curved backwards; regularly curved backwards on the sides; where the shell has been well preserved it is closely covered with fine strize, strongly arched backwards, on the periphery, into tongue shaped markings ; siphuncle medium size; central or nearly central; umbilicus open, showing all the whorls; mouth transverse, subreniform ; vertical height .=54, of an inch; transverse diameter .;2; of an inch; greatest diameter of the shell 1.;35, inches; depth of septu next to the last chamber .;%', of an inch. This beautifully ornamented Mautilus, differs from the WV. tubercu- latus, Sow., with which it is most nearly related, in not being concave on the sides, as well as in its markings and the outline of its septu. Position and locality. It is found crushed in the roof shales of No. 9 coal, at the mines of the Kentucky Coal Company, Union county, Kentucky, and in a more perfect state of preservation in the fossilif- erous nodules of calcareous sulphuret of iron in the same shale; which, when thrown out, decompose, from the action of the atmosphere and yield readily their store of fossils to the collector. SOLENIMYA SOLENIFORMIS. Coz. (Pl. IX, fig. 5; natural size.) -Transversely elongated ; inequilateral ; beaks not elevated, sloping to the front, about one-third the length from the anterior end; ex- tremities and base obtusely rounded—more decided anteriorly in young than in adult specimens; cardinal border een surface covered with concentric lines and furrows ; length 2.,44; inches ; width 1.45, inches. Position and locality. It is very abundant in the black shale which forms the roof of No. 9 coal, on the property of the Kentucky Coal Company, Union county, Kentucky, and in the same character of shale, over the thirteen inch coal, in the bed of the Ohio river, at the head of French Island. PRODUCTUS MURICATUS. Norwood and Pratten. Pl. IX, fig..6; natural size.) For description, see Journal Academy Natural Sciences, Aug., 1854, pl. I, fag. 8. 574 PALZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Position and locality. Characteristic of coal No. 9, and found in great abundance in the black shale forming its roof, at the Curlew and Kentucky Coal Company’s mines, Union county ; at Lewisport, Han- cock county, Kentucky; and at the Saline and Shawneetown Compa- ny’s mines, Gallatin county, Illinois. GONIATITES NOLINENSIS. Coz. (Pl. X, fig. 1, quarter view natural size; fig. 1a, outline of dorsal septu ;* fig.16, outline of ventral septu.) Discoidal; one and a half to two whorls, increasing in the propor- tion of .,4% of an inch to 1.,2,5, inches; periphery very convex; sides obtusely rounded; umbilicus large, round, vertically walled; dorsal lobe and sinus dart shaped, first lateral lobe elliptically pointed, a little longer and broader than the dorsal; lateral sinus angular, acutely pointed, about twice as broad, and one-third longer than the dorsal; second lateral lobe subovately rounded; ventral sinus longer and more acute than the corresponding dorsal lobe; second ventral lobe obtuse- ly rounded, and broader than the lateral sinus, with which it corres- ponds; mouth moderately transverse; greatest diameter 2.1;7, inches; width of umbilicus .,4, of an inch; transverse diameter of mouth 1.25, inches; vertical hight 1.,2%, inches.) ~ It is closely related to G. crenistria, Piull., but differs in having the last chamber less transverse; umbilicus larger, and the dorsal lobe acutely pointed; not bifid.as in the @. crenistria. The specimens found are not well enough preserved to show any ornaments that may have existed on the shell, they are all converted into oxide of iron;..and like their associates WV. ferratus, nob. and... canaliculatus,..nob..have been. used at Nolin Furnace for the manufacture of iron. » Position and locality. Nolin Iron Works Edmonson county,’Ken- tucky, in .a thin stratum of ferruginous fire-clay with fragments of coal closely resembling charcoal, about one hundred feet. above the conglomerate. NAUTILUS FERRATUS. Coz. (Pl. X, fig 2, half natural size; fig. 2a section natural size. Globose, convoluted, whorls two, embracing, increasing in width in the proportion of 1.74% inches to 2.41; inches, regularly rounded on *Explanation of the nomenclature. Fig. la¢, the arrow is in the dorsal lobe, and points to the mouth in the direction of increase; d, dorsal lobe; d, s, dorsal sinus; J’, first lateral lobe; J, 8’, first lateral sinus; L’, second lateral lobe. Fig. 16, v, 3, ventral sinus; v, 2’, first veutral lobe; v, 8”, second ventral sinus; »v, l’, second ventral lobe. uke sf PALZONTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 575 the periphery and sides; septu obtusely curved backwards on the sides, rapidly rising forward into conical arches on the middle of the peri- phery, about three lines apart in the middle where two inches wide; periphery marked in casts with an obsolete band about one line in width; last chamber large, about as deep as wide; mouth subreniform; umbilicus moderately large, profound, nearly vertically walled, slight- ly enlarged on the last whorl. Diameter 3.33, inches; transverse diameter of mouth about 2.,41, inches; vertical height 1.545 inches; width of umbilicus 534, of an inch. It is readily distinguished from JV. globatus, Sow., and LV. bilobatus, Sow., with which it is related; by the size and shape of its septu, and the less rapid increase of its whorls. The specimen under description is destitute of spiral or transverse strize, though it is possible they may exist when found in a more perfect state of preservation. Position and locality. Found in great abundance, converted into oxide of iron and mostly imperfect; associated with G. Molinensis, nob. about one hundred feet above the conglomerate, ina stratum of ferru- ginous fire-clay and carbonaceous matter; Nolin Iron Works, Edmon- son county, Kentucky. Being an excellent ore it has contributed largely for the manufacturing of iron. NAUTILUS CANALICULATUS. Coz. (Pl. X, fig. 3, natural size; fig. 3 a, section of a smaller specimen.) Discoidal, whorls inc, to two and a half, increasing in width in the pro- portion of .=%,% to 1.3% inches; obtusely rounded on the sides; broad, but shallow groove on the periphery, diminishing in depth from the mouth backwards, obsolete on the first whorl when exposed, a narrow indistinct band extends along the centre of the dorsal groove in well preserved specimens; septu about two lines apart in the middle, where three quarters of an inch in width, curved backwards on the sides and periphery, on the rounded edges of the groove they bend semi-ellipti- cally forward; umbilicus large, deep, vertically walled, exposing par- tially all the whorls; mouth transversely i eete ; diameter 2.551. inches ; re height of the mouth, about 1. Te +o inches; transverse diameter 1.45, inches; width of umbilicus .42, of an inch. It differs from the JV. sulcatus, Phil., by its rounded sides, greater breadth on the periphery, smaller and more vertically walled umbilicus. Position and locality. Abundant in the same bed with G. Nolen- 576 PAL )NTOLOGICAL REPORT OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY- sisand JV. ferratus. Nolin iron works, Edmondson county, Ken- tucky. LINGULA UMBONATA. Coz. (Pl. X, fig. 4, entering valve enlarged; fig. 4a, natural size.) Subpentagonal, longitundinally elongated, very tumid at the umbo ; beak elevated, pointed, not projecting beyond the cardinal border; greatest width about one-third the length below the beak; sides nearly parallel, slightly convex and narrowing towards the front; front very obtusely rounded, posterior lateral margins rather acutely rounded, uniting in an elliptical point at the beak; slightly flattened along the mesial line, commencing from a point near the beak, and gradually widening to the front margin, a little pinched in near the umbo; sur- face beautifully marked with fine concentric striz between the more distinct lines of growth; length 4% of an inch; width 4% of an inch. This species is easily recognized in well preserved specimens, by its prominent umbo, and its peculiar longitudinally flattened mesial area. It attains a much greater size, but we have none larger suff- ciently perfect to figure. It is highly characteristic of No. 1, B, coal, and has been found in beds of this level, by Mr. Lesquereux, in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Position and locality. Very abundant in the black slate roof of No. 1, B, coal, at Bell’s mines, Crittenden county ; Casey’s mines, Union county, and Hawesville mines, Hancock county, Kentucky. Actinocrious abnormis, - - : : 3 . - . 479 Arca carbonaria, - - - s é . 567 Ashes of coal, color of, s - é x Pp 2 i 3 519 Asterocrinus capitalis, - : : “ - ‘ . * 472 Asterocrinus? coronarius, . - ‘ - “ * 5 476 Avicula acosta, - - - - : . 2 : r 572 Avicula rectalateraria, - - é é 7 ‘ 2 571 Cardinia? fragilis, - : - - ‘ 570 Chemnitzia parva, - - + - a : 7 567 Coal, Ardrie, Muhlenburg county, fossils of, - . . + 547 Coal, Battery-rock, fossils of, 7 - ; a 527 Coal beds of Kentucky, horizontal exposition of, - - 2 - 524 Coal, Bell’s mine, Crittenden county, fossils of, - - - 529 Coal, Bonharbor, Daviess county, fossils of, - - - * 547 Coal, Breckinridge, fossils of, - * é - = 2 532 Coal, Casey’s mine, fossils of, - - - - : - ‘ 529 Coal, Curlew mines, Union county, fossils of. - - - - 542, 546 Coal-fields of Kentucky, western, paleontological characters of, - 622, 526 Coal, Hartford, Ohio county, fossils of, - - - 543 Coal, Hawesville, fossils of, - “ Z é e x 531 Coal, Henderson shaft, fossils of, - - 3 544 Coal, Jackfield, Hopkins county, fossils of, - - + - - 542 Coal, Lewisport, Hancock county, fossils of, - - - 7 s 544 Coal, Llewellyn mine, Union county, fossils of, = - . 546 Coal, lower, Lesley’s description of, in Pennsylvania, - - - 550 Coal Measures, Barren, Z = 3 a < 7 ie 552 Coal Measures, fossil flora, - a : a “ % A & 499 Coal, M’Nairy, Muhlenburg county, fossils of, - - - 643, 544, 548 Coal, Miller’s, Muhlenburg county, fossils of, - - 5 2 547 Coal, Mulford’s mines, Union county, fossils of, - - - - 542 ‘Coals No. 1 to No. 12, fossils of, - - - - - 527 to 554, 560 Coal No. 1 B, fossil shells of, - - 2 560 Coal No. 9, fossils shells of, - : 5 . S 561 Coal No. 11, fossil shells of, * - - = 7 é 563 Coal, Old Distillery, fossils of, - = 3 : . , : 530 Coal, Peaks of Otter, fossils of, - e - - S - = 543 Coal, Pigeon run, Hopkins county, fossils of, - - - - 547 Goal, Providence, Hopkins county, fossils of, = - - 746 578 INDEX TO PALHONTOLOGICAL REPORIS OF GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. Coal, theory of its formation, - - - 2