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Show period in this country was potash1 pot-ash1 thrown down in beds comparable com-parable in size to those in tin1 Old World. The United States is still a young and large country, and the search for potash by the drill has just begun. Drillers in private employ are boring in hundreds of places for oil, coal, water, and other minerals in in areas never before touched by the drill, and they have hundreds, hun-dreds, possibly thousands, of opportunities op-portunities to find beds of p'otash. The discovery of potash in commercial com-mercial amounts on a claim, lease, or farm might be far more valuable than the discovery of an oil pool or a mine. An Opportunity for Well Drillers We take the following from the U. S. Geological Survey Press Bulletin and as there is a great 'deal of well drilling in this vicinity and the formation seems to conferm with the descriptions des-criptions herein given we suggest sug-gest that the, well drillers of this locality give the matter a study and if more explicit information infor-mation is needed write the Geological Geo-logical Survey, Dept. of the Interior In-terior for literature and information. infor-mation. Well drillers in the United States may find an opportunity to discover potash as a mere byproduct by-product of drilling for other materials. This opportunity, which may be called a duty and which should not be unmixed with interest, only requires that the driller shall watch the drill . cuttings and salt waters brought up by his outfit and thus cooperate cooper-ate with the Government in its search for potash. The advance in price of potash salts from the normal rate of about $40 to over $400 a ton since the outbreak of the war makes still more evident than before the difficulty as well as the duty of finding this indispensable indis-pensable commodity somewhere within our own vast domain "while the country waits.". The United States Gelogical Survey has devoted a part of its energies ener-gies to the investigation of rocks and minerals containing large percentages of potash and to the search by the drill for beds of potash salts that have been burned burn-ed during different geologic periods per-iods in the evaporation pans of certain dried-up ancient inland seas and lakes. The ' work done has included the testing of brines and bitterns from many places, especially from salt-producing fields, and the examination of drill cuttings from wells. It is practically certain that beds of potash salts, if they exist in - basins in the United States other than Searles Lake; Cat., were laid down in geologic formation that include beds of common salt, gypsum, anhydrite, and like minerals, just as: they were in Germany and Spain, though the beds may not be so thick- The formation laid down in those ancient seas and lakes, which by their evaporation deposited de-posited thick beds of salt and other minerals, therefore probably prob-ably afford the best promise of yielding salts rich in potash. Beds of rock salt and gypsum occur in large areas in the United Unit-ed States. They are found in Salina rocks of New York and Pennsylvania and in other forma-; forma-; tions of about the same age, laid ; down in Michigan and Ohio ; during periods of great asidity. ; In southeastern Michigan a bed ; of rock salt 900 feet thick Is said ; to have been found by drill holes. ; Dense brines or 3alt deposits are ; found in Carboniferous strata in West Virginia and other Eastern ' States, in the "red beds" of the Southwest and Rocky Mountains, in the Cretaceous deposits of several of the Western States, and in the Tertiary strata of the far Southwest. In many of these regions there may have been areas where the evaporation evapora-tion of the water bodies precipitated precipi-tated potash salts as well as common salt, though in most of these areas, as in most of the more recent Western lake beds, the potash was abstracted and jealously secreted by the clays of the muddy waters, and so deposited de-posited in the shales. In some of these salt-depositing areas, however, the conditions were nc doubt at some time favorable for the laying down of blankets of potash salts that were latei buried beneath other formations, I It is unreasonable to believe thai in every one of these evapora tion pans the potash was diffus ed, and that nowhere throughoui the widespread and diversifiec aalt beds of different geologii |