The False Coal Measures

THE FALSE COAL MEASURES.

The false or proto-carboniferous formation overlie the vespertine rocks. This formation is, perhaps, cotemporary or of the same era with the English lower coal series, beneath the millstone grit. It rarely develops in any commercial value in our American formations, but is coextensive with the Appalachian Coal-Basin. We find thin traces of coal and coal slates beneath the red shale or on the vespertine, around the anthracite formations, and everywhere along its inside or upper face from the Catskill to the Lookout, and at the base of the eastern escarpment of the Alleghany Mountains thin seams of this coal have been found, and many have picked and pried into them without profit, except in practical experience. Those false coal measures, and the thin, imperfect coals they bear, have been opened or proved near Altoona, on the Pennsylvania Railroad, at the base of Sidelong Hill, Berkeley county, on the north branch of the Shenandoah, in Augusta county, and on the New River, in Montgomery county, Vir ginia, and in other localities further south. But the coals of this system

have never been developed in workable quantities or of marketable value, except on the New River, in Virginia; and here we find a truly valuable deposit of workable and marketable coal. But even here there is no uniformity of strata, and mining operations are subject to numerous inter ruptions from "up-throws" and "down-throws," and frequent faults of slate and dirt, which mar the coal. Yet this is a valuable deposit, never theless, and deserves an extended notice in connection with the coal-fields of Virginia and the South, and which will be found further on in its appropriate place, from our own practical experience.