18 90. J Prof. W. Boyd DawMns on Search for Coal, dec. 175 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 



Friday, June 6, 1890. 



Basil Woodd Smith, Esq. F.R.A.S. F.S.A. Vice-President, in the 



Chair. 



Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A. F.R.S. 



The Search for Coal in the South of England. 



1. Introductory — 2. The conditions under which the coal-measures were formed 

 — 3. The break up of the Carboniferous alluvia into isolated coal-basins — 

 4. Godwin-Austen's conclusions — 5. The conclusions of Prestwich and the 

 Coal Commission — 6. Tlie range of the coal-measures under the Newer Eocks 

 of Somerset — 7. Coal-measures in Oxfordshire — 8. The district of London — 

 9. The Weald of Sussex — 10. The coal-fields of Northern France, Belgium, 

 and Westphalia — 11. The discovery of a coal-field at Dover— 12. General 

 conclusions. 



1. The bare facts of the recent discovery of coal-measures at Shake- 

 speare Cliff, near Dover, have been published in the press, and the 

 full account cannot be written till the completion of the inquiry which 

 is now going on. It is, however, not unfitting that the bearing of the 

 discovery on the general question of the existence of workable coal- 

 fields in Southern England should be discussed within these walls, not 

 merely on account of its general interest, but because it naturally 

 follows the paper read by Mr. Godwin-Austen before the Eoyal 

 Institution, in 1858, " On the Probability of Coal beneath the South- 

 eastern parts of England." In 1855 he had placed before the Geo- 

 logical Society of London the possibility of the existence of coal in 

 South-eastern England at a workable depth. In the two years which 

 had elapsed, " the possibility " had grown in his mind into the " pro- 

 bability," and in the thirty-two years which have passed between the 

 date of the paper before this Institution and the present time, " the 

 probability " has been converted into a certainty by the recent dis- 

 covery at Dover. In this communication, the lines of the inquiry 

 laid down by Godwin-Austen will be strictly followed. We must 

 first examine the conditions under which the coal-measures were 

 accumulated. 



2. The seams of coal are proved, by the surface-soil traversed by 

 roots and rootlets, to which in some cases the trunks are still attached, 

 to have been formed in situ by the growth and decay of innumerable 

 generations of Plants (Lepidodendra, Sigillaria, Catamites), Pines, 

 (Trigonocarjpa, Dadoxylon, Sternhergia), allied to Salishurla, and a 

 vast undergrowth of Ferns, all of which contributed to form a peat- 

 like morass. Each seam represents an accumulation on a land- 

 surface, just as the sandstones and shales above it point to a period 



