48 Geological Discoveries at Billesdon Copious 



comitants, and resting upon a clunch, the usual pavement of 

 coal : this has also an almost vertical dip to the S.S.E. Here, 

 as in the first bassets, confusion and disorder are apparent; 

 but this, as Williams asserts, in his History of the Mineral 

 Kingdom^ is common to all strata which, as in this instance, 

 come in contact with the base of hills or other previously 

 formed elevations. 



In reference to the measures proved by boring, it may be 

 necessary to state, that men of unquestionable judgment have 

 not only recognised them as the identical strata represented 

 by their vestigia at the surface or line of bassets, but pro- 

 nounced them to possess, collectively, precisely the same 

 mineralogical characters, &c., which so definitely distinguish 

 the old coal formation. It may be important to remark, that, 

 in the course of our penetrating the upper beds of this form- 

 ation, marine exuviae were found tolerably abundant, but de- 

 creased until we arrived at, apparently, the old coal formation, 

 where they entirely disappeared, and were succeeded by those 

 of vegetables alone. The carbon, which gradually increased 

 in the measures, was, in the last * fifteen or twenty yards, ex- 

 tremely abundant ; indeed, quite equal in quantity (as proved 

 by the common process of washing) to any of the strata in 

 the immediate vicinity of the coal beds of the explored coal- 

 fields. This lower series also contained two or three thin 

 veins of coal, commonly called breeders. Can any thing be 

 more clearly demonstrative of the total absence of the red 

 marl (in this vicinity) from its assigned geological position ? 

 However, there appears nothing extraordinary in this circum- 

 stance, when we take into consideration the extremely variable 

 thickness of all the secondary formations, and particularly the 

 red marl, or new red sandstone, which, it is well known, is 

 frequently found terminating abruptly, forming thin beds, or 

 swelling into considerable thickness, in the comparatively 

 short space of a square mile or two. 



To revert to the fact of the bassets of the coal and all its 

 concomitants, accompanied by the characteristic fossils of the 

 old coal formation, traversing this district in a direct line: 

 whether they result from igneous or aqueous causes ; whether 

 they are calculated to break or disarrange the concatena- 

 tions of the modern system, or whether they can be recon- 

 ciled thereto, I leave to the learned to determine. That the 



* After this interesting enquiry had been prosecuted to the depth of 

 more than 100 fathoms, it was unfortunately terminated by the introduc- 

 tion, by some malicious person, of a quantity of iron and steel into the 

 boring-hole. 



