1865.] BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 353 



cing on the minds of practical men, since it was entirely owin°- to 

 inferences deduced from geological phenomena that this work 

 was commenced, whilst its success was derided by many of the 

 miners of the adjacent coal-field." 



If that enterprise has not been extensively followed, we must 

 recollect, that, to sink shafts to depths of many hundred feet can 

 in central England scarcely be profitable, so long as coal is found 

 so much nearer the surface, as in the South Staffordshire field ; 

 yet, as that field is tending towards exhaustion, it is cheering to 

 know that extensive beds of coal will be worked in future ages 

 under the red lands of the Midland counties and the Magnesian 

 Limestone of Nottinghamshire, under which the great Derbyshire 

 coal-field passes ; and hence all present estimates of the duration of 

 our coal- supply must be mure or less fallacious, if such high proba- 

 bilities be left out of the estimate. At the same time it must be 

 admitted that we are consuming this staple of our national great- 

 ness at so rapidly increasing a ratio, that the value of the warning 

 voice of Sir William Armstrong at the Newcastle Meeting of the 

 Association, when he told us that, with a continued yearly increase 

 of two and three-quarter millions of tons, our coal-supply would be 

 exhausted in little more than two centuries, is well sustained. Now 

 when this announcement was made, the average total annual pro- 

 duce, as ascertained by the Mining Record Office of the Museum 

 of practical Geology, amounted to eighty-six millions of tons ; but 

 by the estimate of last year, as prepared by Mr. Robert Hunt, and to 

 which I have recently affixed my name, the produce has risen to 

 the astounding figure of ninety-three millions of tons. Such is our 

 own natural industry and enterprise that not more than 9 J per cent, 

 of this enormous quantity is exported for the use of foreign countries 

 among which France receives but 1,400,000 tons per annum. 



Passing from the consideration of these deep-seated subjects to 

 the superficial deposits of the country around Birmingham, I would 

 advise any of my associates who have not witnessed the phenomena 

 to repair to the parishes of Trescotfrancl Trysull, and the adjacent 

 hills to the west of Wolverhampton, there to see a quantity of 

 blocks of granitic and other hard northern rocks, all foreign to the 

 district, which were evidently carried by icebergs floating in the 

 sea which covered this flat and undulating region in the heart of 

 England during that glacial period when Scotland was what Green 

 land is now — an ice- clad region, whence icebergs, transporting 



Vol. II. x No. 5, 



