Part I. Report of progress in 1869, by J. S. Newberry, chief geologist. Part II. Report of progress in the second district, by E. B. Andrews, assist. geologist. Part III. Report on geology of Montgomery County, by Edward Orton, assist. geologist.

75
France, who use as a manure a black earth highly charged with sulphur,
also escape the ravages of the malady and attribute their escape to the
sulphur. Experiments are furthermore being made on an extensive scale
to test the value of the slate when ground to a fine flour and applied in
the same way as a substitute for ground plaster.
The same flour mixed with coal-tar as a kind of mastic and applied on
a sheathing of woolen paper, has of late been considerably employed for
roofing. When well put on it makes a good roof, capable possibly of
almost indefinite renewal of painting with a fresh coat of the mixture.
Other elements of value are supposed to lie within the rich body of
slate, among them the elements of sulphuric acid and alum.
All which brings us down to the limestone at low water mark. Richer
hills there are, but where can any be found so thoroughly valuable from
top to bottom as these?
W. J. FLAGG.
The Waverly hills in Southern Ohio are heavily timbered, and the day
is not far distant when all the accessible forests will be needed and used
as fuel for the production of iron. For many purposes charcoal iron is a
necessity, and it will always command an extra price. The number of
charcoal furnaces is rapidly diminishing, while that of stonecoal furnaces is increasing. Charcoal iron will, therefore, be relatively more valuable in the future than now. There are, however, few districts in the
State where woodlands can be obtained sufficiently cheap for furnace
uses. This is not the case in the Waverly hills below Portsmouth, for
lands are much cheaper here than in any other part of the State. Iron
ores from Missouri are already largely used by furnaces higher up the
river, and also limestone for flax is carried up the river from the Silurian
limestone formation in the vicinity of Manchester, Adams county. Ores
for mixture, or to be used independently, could be obtained on the line of
the Portsmouth Branch of the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad.
I have not been able to study the Waverly rocks carefully at points
north of the immediate valley of the Ohio river, and nowhere have I
made a complete section.
On the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad, we pass, in going west, the
base of the productive coal measures in the vicinity of the Cincinnati
Furnace five or six miles west of Hamden, in Vinton county. Here are
ledges of coarse sandrock of great thickness, giving a picturesque mural
character to that part of the "Hungry Hollow" valley. At the base of
the coarse sandrock, I find in the railroad cuts to the westward, alternate
layers of conglomerate and fine grained sandstone, the latter, however,
greatly exceeding the former in thickness. Under these, the rocks become
uniformly fine grained, and both in texture and color resemble the layers
of the middle and lower Waverly strata, at Buena Vista, on the Ohio
river. I have not yet measured the group between the coal measures
above and the undoubted Waverly below, but there are probably one
hundred and fifty feet of these intermediate beds. The railroad descends