COAL UNDER SOUTH-EASTERN ENGLAND. 149 



also warn us off certain tracts, at all events until our knowledge has greatly 

 increased. 



I would also allude to the fact that in Northern France disturbances of a 

 peculiar character sometimes occur, by means of which older formations have been 

 pushed up above newer ones ; so that Coal Measures have been found and worked 

 beneath Devonian rocks. A like thing occurs also in the Bristol district, though 

 to a less extent. From this it follows that we need not utterly despair of finding 

 Coal Measures even where an older formation has been struck. At the same time 

 I do not advise the carrying on of trial-work in such cases, which should probably 

 be left until actual work gives indications of possible success. In conclusion 1 

 would draw attention to the fact that about a third of the coal-yield of France is 

 got from hidden Coal Measures (covered b}- Cretaceous, etc., Ijeds) along the line 

 indicated above. Frt)m this it seems fair to infer that there will be a successful 

 result from like enterprise in England. As I ventured to say, before the success- 

 ful issue of the Dover boring, " it seems to me that the day wi// come when coal will 

 he worked in the South-East of England." 



Dr. Taylor's short report was of a general nature, agreeing with 

 the above, but he did not recommend any particular locality in the 

 Eastern Counties as a place of trial for coal. 



Since the reports were written, Messrs. Holmes and Whitaker, 

 having been asked by the Coal Boring Syndicate as to the best 

 locality for a first trial, decided, without any concert with each other, 

 that some place between Colchester and Harwich, not far from the 

 Stour river, would be the best. 



Mr. W. Jerome Harrison, F.G.S., has written a pamphlet'' on the 

 subject, in which he gives his reasons for preferring the north-west of 

 Essex (in the neighbourhood of Newport, Quendon, and Thaxted) 

 as offering the most eligible site for a bore-hole likely to reach 

 Coal Measures, because he thinks they would there be met 

 with at less depth than in the other localities mentioned. Mr, 

 Harrison's pamphlet consists of revised reports, with additions, pre- 

 pared by him at the request of Col. Cranmer-Byng in 1887 and 

 1 89 1, and contains a large amount of information on the subject. 

 But with regard to his selection of a site, M. T. V. Holmes has 

 kindly sent us the following remarks : 



" I cannot make out on what grounds Mr. Harrison expects to find Coal 

 Measures in the north-west of Essex. Of course they may be there. But as we 

 have Lower Carboniferous Rocks at Harwich, and know only of Palaeozoic rocks 

 of quite another kind at Ware and Culford to the west and north-west, it seems to 

 me that the first step in a systematic series of borings should be to try a few miles 

 away from the only spot in the Eastern Counties where lower rocks of the same 

 series as the Coal Measures have been found. It is quite possible that the Pakeozoic 

 rocks under Bradtield may be older than those of Harwich, and that the coal- 



5 " On the Search for Coal in the South-East of England, with special reference to the 

 Probability of the E.\istence of a Coal Field beneath Essex." — Birmingham, 1894. 



