WEST VIRGINIA (ante), lies between let. 10' and 40° 38' n., and long. 77° 40' and 82' 40' w.; and is bounded u. by Pennsylvania and Maryland, e., s.e. and s. by Vir ginia, and w. by Kentucky, from which it is divided by the Big Sandy river, and Ohio, from which it is separated by the Ohio river. Its greatest length n. and s. is about 240 en., end its greatest breadth 160 miles. The area is 23,000 sq.m., or 14,720,000 acres. Much of the state is mountainous and hilly, being traversed by several parallel ridges of the Appalachian mountains, such as the Cheat, Laurel, Greenbrier, Cancanon, Cowpas ture, Flat Top, Bich, Briery, Gauley, Birch, Sewell, and Meadow mountains, which are generally fertile to the top and well wooded. The country slopes w. to the valley of the Ohio, and excepting the Potomac, which forms a part of the boundary between the state and Maryland, and its affluents, the rivers of West Virginia are tributary to the Ohio. The most important of these flowing directly into that river are the Big Sandy, Guyandotte, Great Kanawha, Little Kanawha, and Monongahela, all of Which are navigable. The geology and mineralogy of the state comprises eozoic rocks in Jefferson county, on the eastern edge; lower silurian limestone and Medina sandstone; soft shales and clay slates; and coal measures that cover more than 16,000 sq.m., which contain every quality of cannel, splint, coking, block, and bituminous coal yet discovered, and all of them in thick and easily worked veins. Salt also, a usual deposit in the coal measures, is found in springs of great strength and purity of brine, and at numerous points on several of the rivers already mentioned are several large salt works. Common tufa, hydraulic, and building limestones, fire-clay, potter's clay, glass sand, ocher, barytes, black oxide of manganese, and saltpeter are found in abundance, and zinc, copper, and lead iu moderate quantities. The soils of the state may be classed as clay soils, which contain 75 per cent and over of clay; sandy soils, containing 75 per cent of sand; and loams, composed of clay and sand mixed mahout equal proportion. The last, however, is said to be the characteristic soil, and the greater part of the coal-measures are covered by it. The principal forest trees are the white, black or water, blue, grem, and moun tam ash; the aspen, beech, water-beech, black and red birch, fetid and sweet buckeye; cedar, wild-cherry, chestnut, Kentucky coffee tree, cottonwood, dogwood, and witch elm; black and southern balsam, fir, and the hemlock, spruce, the black or sour gum, and the sweet gum! three species of hickory; the white, red, and bitter nut; the holly, locust, linden, red maple, red mulberry, twelve species of oak, the poplar, sycamore, black walnut, and butternut. Altogether over 9,000,000 acres are covered with forests.
The wild animals found in the state include the panther, wild-cat, lynx, wolf, black bear, raccoon, 'opossum, elk, deer, rabbit, and hare. The climate is generally free from extremes of heat or cold. In the highland sections the air is pure and healthful and favorable to persons having pulmonary diseases. The mean annual temperature has been found to be 52' 46', and the rainfall about 43 inches.
West Virginia came into existence as a state shortly after the breaking out of the rebellion in 1861. Up to that period it had formed the w. and n.w. portion of the com monwealth of Virginia. When the commonwealth seceded, however, the. people of the western section protested, and in August met in convention to denounce the ordinance and order an election the following October to decide upon the question of organizing a new state embracing 39 counties, to be called the state of Kanawha. The votes of these coun ties were nearly unanimous, and a constitution was prepared and ratified by the people in May, 1862. Shortly afterward the consent of the Virginia legislatttre was given for the formation of the new state, the name of in the mean time had been changed to that it now bears, and on Dec. 31 congress admitted the state to the union, upon the ratification by the people of the proposed amendment to the constitution abrogatingsits provision that no slave or free colored person should come into the state for permanent resideuce. During the month of May following state officers were elected and the state government was formally inaugurated at Wheeling, the chosen capital, with A. J. Bore loan as governor. The military operations that had taken place within the territory of the new state had occurred in 1861, when the confederate forces were driven out. Immediately after the state was admitted to the union it provided the union army with 26,510 men. The state then comprised 48 counties; but four more were added after the war, since which time its progress in education, commercial enterprise, and railroad development has been rapid nail notable.