74 THE COAL QUESTION. 



This map seeks to show what would he seen if we could 

 strip off the newer rocks so as to expose the coal measures 

 heneath : it is further attempted to show the positions respectively 

 of the lower coals ; the pennant, or middle series ; and the upper 

 coals. The whole is seen to form one basin when the overlying 

 rocks are removed ; theory indicates this ; on this alone we depend 

 in parts where no pits have been sunk. 



It is noticeable at once how much larger the concealed part of 

 the field is than the part where the ''measures" come to the 

 surface. 



Taking the figures of the Coal Comissioners, the area of the 

 exposed portion is only 30,500 acres, but that of the calculated 

 coal-field is 152,780 acres, or five times the visible coal field: of 

 this however, 24,111 acres have been proved by pits and are 

 being worked. Thus of the amount of coal put down by the 

 commissioners to our coal-field, more than three-fifths of it is 

 theoretical only, it has never been proved at all. Yet it figures 

 in that part of the report which gives the available coal, and is 

 not reckoned with the probable extensions of coal-fields which 

 we shall come to presently. This seems to me a somewhat 

 irregular way of proceeding, for until the beds are proved in one 

 or two places over this large unexplored area, it is impossible to 

 say how much may not be lost by faults and dislocations which 

 carry the beds to unavailable depths . That there are dislocations 

 seems to be acknowledged from the position of the seams in the 

 Bishop's Sutton pit. 



To estimate then the coal in the unproved portions of the field, 

 the Commissioner has assumed the beds to continue without any 

 dislocations, and has drawn theoretical sections from the outcrop 

 of the Carboniferous Limestone and Millstone Grit which skirt the 

 basin on the one hand, and the dips of the seams shown 

 in the nearest pits on the other hand : all coal which is more than 

 four thousand feet deep is not calculated. For instance, the 

 numerous pits in the Eadstock district are all in the Tipper Coals, 

 and below them at a depth of some eight thousand feet from the 



