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VI. — On the Fossil Flora of the Staffordshire Coal Fields. By Robert Kidston, 



RE.S.E., F.G.S. (With a Plate.) 



(Read 39th January 1888.) 



PART I. 



On the Fossil Plants collected during the Sinking of the Shaft of the Hamstead 



Colliery, Great Bakr, near Birmingham. 



The area comprised in the county of Stafford embraces five coal fields — 



I. The Goldsitch Moss Coal Field, in the extreme north-east of the county. 

 II. The Cheadle and Churnet Valley Coal Field. 



III. The Wetley and Shafferlong Coal Fiekl 



IV. The Coal Field of the Potteries. 



V. The South Staffordshire Coal Field. 



The three first mentioned arc of small extent, and as I know little of their fossil flora 



they are omitted from this series of papers on the Carboniferous Flora of the Stafford- 

 shire Coal Fields. 



I, however, devote a separate communication to the fossil plants met with while 

 sinking the shaft of the Hamstead Colliery, Great Barr, as a considerable part of the 

 rocks passed through during this operation is clearly Upper Coal Measures, not 

 Permian, as has been generally stated. The pal^eontological evidence, therefore, becomes 

 of special importance in determining the age of the red shales occurring in the upper part 

 of this sinking, which have been usually mapped as Permian. 



Strata of the same age also occur in the Potteries Coal Field, but the fossil plants are 

 not so fuUy known from them as from the strata passed through in the sinking at Ham- 

 stead. The determination, therefore, of the true position of the red shales at Hamstead 

 assists one in dealing with the stratiography of other districts of Staffordshire. 



At the meeting of the British Association, held at Birmingham in 1886, Messrs 

 Frederick G. Meachem, M.E., and H. Insley, read a paper, entitled " Notes on the Rocks 

 between the Thick Coal and the Trias north of Birmingham and the Old South Stafford- 

 shire Coal Field ;" this paper, of which an abstract is given in the Report of the British 

 Association for 1886,* contains the only published opinion, as f;xr as I am aware, tluit 

 these red shales belong to the U2^p)er Coal 3Ieasures. 



* Page 626. 

 VOL. XXXV. PART 6. 3 G 



