nips, which is an improvement, its nutritive properties being better developed by the cooking, and greater succulence being added to the mass. The amount of extra labor entailed, and the additional expense for fuel, have however prevented this plan of preparing the food from extending. The cooking of the turnips has also been tried, but there is no benefit gained by so doing. More food is consumed, the animals thrive no faster, and the meat is not of such good quality as when raw food is given. Everything else being favorable, the enormous labor and expenditure for fuel necessary in carrying out such a system would effectually prevent its general adoption. A comfortable bed for the cattle to lie on is a point in their manageIment not beneath the attention of the careful and successful feeder. Everything that conduces to their comfort must of necessity also hasten the formation of flesh; and any one, therefore, neglecting to provide his cattle with a good bed, however attentive he may be to them in other respects, is neglecting a matter of the most vital importance. A comfortable stall, good food, and plenty of it, a good bed, and the free use of the curry-comb, soon effects a vast improvement in the appearance of the animals, rendering them an ornament, and a rich one, to the farm on which they are being fed, the peculiar joy and delight of their attendants, and a source of mingled pride and satisfaction to their owner. AGRICULTURAL AND MINERAL RESOURCES OF OHIO. REPORT OF A SURVEY OF THE ASHTABULA AND NEW LISBON RAILROAD ROUTE. BY PROF. JOHN S. NEWBERRY. CHARACTER OF THE SURFACE. The Agricultural capabilities of the entire region lying between the Lake and the Ohio, on the line of the A. & N. L. R. R., are of the first class. Nearly every portion of it is already occupied by a dense and wealthy population, and is in a high state of cultivation; the price of farming lands varying from thirty to seventy-five dollars per acre. Here, as elsewhere, the character of the soil is determined by the nature of the geological sub-strata from which it has been derived; and as the number and character of the manufacturing establishments of a country are directly dependent on the mineral character of its rocky basis, no less directly are the nature and success of the system of agriculture pursued dependent on the same cause. The different departments of industry resting on this common foundation, the numbers, the avocations, the wealth, and, we may almost say, the manners and morals of the inhabitants of a district, are determined by its geological structure. The shore of Lake Erie, in the greater part of the Western Reserve, is formed of the equivalents of the Hamilton, Portage and Chemung groups of the New York geologists. The first and lowest consists of dark bituminous shales, with little admixture of silicious matter; the others, of a series of fine-grained sandstones and bluish argillaceous shales. These strata have offered little resistance to the powerful denuding action to which the whole surface of the northern part of Ohio has been subjected; as a consequence, they have been extensively but uniformly eroded, and the detritus carried over by a northern current and deposited in thick beds of bluish clay on the conglomerate and sandstones of the coal measures. The surface left by this process, though not entirely level, presents few great inequalities, and the soil having the composition of the parent rocks, is highly argillaceous. It is inclined to be cold and wet; was originally occupied by a forest of beech, maple, elm, ash, linden, poplar and hickory, and is agriculturally peculiarly adapted to grazing. This, and no preference of its inhabitants, has made the Western Reserve the dairy of the west. Happily this soil, somewhat difficult of subjugation, and not especially attractive to the immigrant, fell into good hands hands which have, by industry and intelligence, made it yield more certain and larger returns than are derived from any other equal portion of the State. In north-eastern Ohio, except where covered by out-liers of the carboniferous conglomerate, these argillaceous rocks extend nearly forty miles southward, when we rise on to the hills of the coal series. The northern slope of these hills is, as I have said, covered with drift, which has given a mixed character to the agriculture of the region, and has made drovers and dairymen of a large part of the farmers of Wethersfield, Austintown and Canfield, on the line of the A. & N. L. R. R. South of this point the drift influence becomes less apparent; the landscape is marked by the graceful curve of the rounded hills characteristic of the coal region; the air is pure and salubrious, the water gushing from every hill-side, clear and sparkling, in perennial springs, soft or hard, as it is above or below some band of limestone. The forest is composed of white, black and red oak, with here and there a poplar and black-walnut, and, on the sandy ridges, the chestnut, which shuns the clay. The farmers are grain-growers, and Columbiana unites with Stark and Wayne to form the centre of the great wheat-producing district of the State. As we approach the Ohio, we find the water-courses cutting deep down into the original plateau of the coal strata, opening all their riches in sections of two and even three hundred feet. Between the streams the country is not broken but rolling, and when visited it, was everywhere covered with the vivid verdure of the springing grain. By a peculiar provision of nature, these lands, though so deeply furrowed by the draining valleys, are generally well watered by copious and perpetual springs. Each hill contains one or more seams of coal running through it horizontally, or nearly so, and under every coal seam is a bed of potter's clay. This clay, impervious to water, bears on its surface the falling showers which have percolated through the porous strata above, and distributes them at its out-cropping edge in never-failing springs. These springs serve the double purpose to point out the position of valuable minerals, and to irrigate the land below. The soil produced by the decomposition of limestone, sandstone, clay and coal, possesses great fertility even to the hill-tops. GEOLOG Y. NORTHERN DIVISION-ASHTABULA TO NILES. The geology of the country along the line of the Railroad from the lake shore, forty miles southward, has already been alluded to. It contains few valuable minerals, and, as I had formerly traversed nearly all of it, I did not think it advisable to go over the ground second time. PORTAGE AND CHEMUNG GROUPS. The shore of the lake, at Ashtabula, is composed of black shales, the prolongation of those underlying the Chemung and Portage groups of New York. Beneath this rock, at the depth of from 200 to 300 feet below the lake level, would be found the white limestone of Sandusky; at too great a depth to be at present available. The Portage Sandstone affords in some localities a very fair building stone, and frequently furnishes an excellent material for grindstones. Along the line of the A. & N. L. R. R, it is nearly destitute of fossils. The Chemung Group consists of alternations of bluish, argillaceous shales, with thin bands of fine-grained, bluish sandstone. This sandstone will sometimes furnish a good grindstone grit, but generally the layers are too thin to make good building stone, and contain protoxide of iron, which, becoming peroxidized by exposure, injures both its color and texture. The upper part of this formation contains bands of fine sandstone which is very refractory, and forms an excellent material for the construction of coke ovens, and for similar purposes, where the wall is to be exposed to great heat. The fossils of this group, though found in some localities, are not abundant. The most characteristic are a Lingula, Orbicula, and Conularia, yet undescribed, which frequently occur together. The Mahoning, at Niles, has cut through the overlying strata, and the bed of the stream is excavated in the Chemung Group. As this is below all beds of coal, the boring, which has been carried to the depth of 150 feet in the trough of the river, has, of course, not resulted in the discovery of any workable bed. Lenticular masses of iron ore of great purity are frequently intercalated among the beds of shale and sandstone forming the Portage and Chemung Groups, but, usually, in too small quantities to be of great practical Still, the erosion of the strata by the streams running over them has, in some localities, exposed a sufficient quantity to be worth collecting. value. CONGLOMERATE. Passing south-west from Ashtabula, in the vicinity of Niles, Trumbull county, at an altitude of about 280 feet above Lake Erie, we strike the Carboniferous Conglomerate which lies at the base of the productive coal measures. This is a coarse, yellowish sand-rock, not readily distinguishable by its color or consistence from some of the sandstones of the coal series above, except that it contains, generally in great abundance, always in considerable numbers, quartz pebbles-rolled and rounded fragments of massive quartz, from the size a pea to that of an egg, which serve to identify the rock wherever found, and to distinguish it from all similar sandstones lying above it. 2 B The importance of this character will be readily appreciated when it remembered that this pebble-rock lies at the base of the coal series, and no workable vein of coal is found in, or below it in the State of Ohio. A knowledge of this fact would have prevented the expenditure of much labor and money in searching for coal below this rock. As will be seen in a subsequent part of this report, high up in the coal series, and above several seams of coal, a second conglomerate occurs, but in it the pebbles are comparatively small, not generally exceeding the size of a grain of wheat. The fossils of the Conglomerate are plants, (Calamites, Lepidodendra, Trigonocarpa, &c.) The thickness of this rock in different parts of the State varies from 25 to 250 feet, being thickest in Portage and Geauga counties, and thinning out toward the Ohio River. It is also thinner in Mahoning county than either west or east, being less than 100 feet in thickness. The Conglomerate furnishes a massive and durable building stone, though less hard and homogeneous than some of the excellent freestones found further south. It is used in the foundations of the C. & M. R. R. bridge at Niles, and as a silicious flux in the iron works at the same place. It is found on both sides of the Mahoning at Niles, but removed by the excavation of the valley from the immediate vicinity of the stream. South of the Mahoning it dips rapidly southward, and disappears beneath the hills of the coal measures, emerging again on the opposite side of the coal basin in Virginia. MIDDLE DIVISION-NILES TO NEW LISBON. THE COAL MEASURES. In crossing the Mahoning at Niles, the Railroad passes from a region agriculturally rich, but nearly destitute of valuable minerals, into a district uniting to great agricultural resources an amount of mineral wealth unsurpassed, if, indeed, it is equalled by that of any other portion of our favored country; and which, if properly developed, must sustain and enrich a large population, and give to your road a permanent and profitable business. WETHERSFIELD, AUSTINTOWN, CANFIELD. At a somewhat variable distance above the conglomerate, but generally within 50 feet, we find the first or lowest bed of coal, which, from its peculiar qualities and its proximity to the lake market, is, perhaps, the most important and valuable of the series. This seam of coal is traceable throughout nearly the entire line of outcrop of the coal basin in Ohio, and has everywhere certain characteristics which distinguish it from all others, though possessing them in a pre-eminent degree in the Mahoning valley, in the vicinity of the line of the A. & N. L. R. R. |