218 Professor E. Forbes's Lecture on the Relations 



Not long ago considerable funds were spent in a district in tho 

 west in a useless search for coal. The adventurers, ignorant of 

 geology, had set to work in dark Silurian shales, among the oldest of 

 stratified rocks, and far beneath our carboniferous strata. Their 

 mineral aspect, however, resenibled that of certain coal- shales with 

 which the miners were familiar. Had they possessed even a shght 

 acquaintance with organic remains, they would have abandoned their 

 profitless experiment at the very commencement ; for the shales in 

 which they were working were charged with graptolites, extinct zoo- 

 phytes, which do not range higher than the lowest fossiliferous group, 

 and the presence of which indicated the true character of the strata 

 beyond question. The fossils did not escape the notice of the miners. 

 They collected them, and grew the more confirmed in their mistake ; 

 for, unacquainted with the differences, they mistook them for coal 

 plants. They might have bored through the earth's centre without 

 coming to the treasure they sought ; their only chance of reaching 

 it was by perforating quite to the antipodes. 



In a second example I was myself personally concerned. Some 

 years ago, when as yet but a student attending the geological and 

 mineralogical lectures of Professor Jameson, I opposed by letter in 

 a provincial journal a mistaken enterprise upon which much money 

 was unfortunately spent. The object of it was to sink through the 

 old red sandstone, with the hope of reaching coal, in a district 

 where such a search was hopeless. The parties engaged were con- 

 firmed in their intentions by the advice of practical coal-miners well 

 acquainted with the collieries of the north of England. These men 

 argued, that since there was limestone and sandstone similar to 

 those rocks associated with coal, and overlying it, in the districts 

 where they had worked, therefore the strata were the same, and 

 coal should be found. I pointed out, chiefly from the evidence of 

 the fossils contained in the limestone overlying the sandstone, that 

 the rocks on which they proposed to operate were only like to, but 

 not identical with, those to which they were compared. I told 

 them — the warning was proffered in vain — that they were throw- 

 ing away their money. One of the shareholders, an intelligent 

 man, and a reader of elementary works on geology, replied to my 

 objections, by attempting to meet them on scientific grounds. In 

 some old-fashioned books it used to be asserted, that shells of the 

 genus Cardium — in plainer language, cockle-shells — when found 

 fossil, are characteristic of tertiary strata. "Now," wrote my op- 

 ponent, " cockles abound in the limestone in question, therefore it 

 is tertiary, and the carboniferous strata must lie beneath." He had 

 mistaken certain forms of Terehratula, shells of a very different 

 order, for cockles ; a very unfortunate mistake, for the error was 

 persisted in, and much good gold turned into irremediable dust. 



I have cited these instances because they not only shew how se- 

 rious an error, leading to considerable pecuniary losses, may be 



