350 



from which the members gathered all the interesting: information respecting both 

 the Church and the Castle, which has been here so condensed. 



Having viewed the Church and tlie Castle, the party resumed their seats 

 for the return journey, diverging slightly to the right or eastward of Clearwell 

 village, by Sling's Pit, in order to visit one of the many so-called "Scowles," or 

 "workings of the old men," as the Foresters term them, being really the traces the 

 Romans have left behind them in the Forest of Dean of their excavations In 

 following the course of the veins of the iron ore. " Scowles " is said to be derived 

 from a British word signifying a hollow — where excavations in search of the ore 

 have caused a subsidence of the overlying surface, this condition is termed by the 

 Foresters as "scowled in." These vestiges now present a series of labyrintliine 

 caverns, having their Cyclopean walls overgrown with ferns, creepers, brushwood 

 and even forest trees with grotesque gnarled roots in character with other weird 

 surroundings, and their floors at this period were carpeted with tempting-looking 

 white flowers, AUiuni ursinum or Ramsons, exhaling, almost to an oppressive 

 degree, after being trampled upon, the odour of wild garlic. 



Mr. W. H. Fryer, a mining engineer of considerable experience, says that 

 the iron ore occurs in a bed of crystalline Jjimestone on the upper portion of the 

 Mountain Limestone. The bed varies from 10 to 20 yards thick and is locally 

 called the "crease" or vein. It is found in irregular veins locally called 

 "churns," which sometimes widen out into caverns, or narrow into very small 

 strings or "leads," containing ore varying from 15 to 60 per cent, of metallic iron 

 in the form of a hydrated peroxide. From the "churns," fissures, usually called 

 "back joints" frequently run back into the underlying Limestone. Mr. Fryer 

 considers that the iron ore was deposited by infiltration from above, the excava- 

 tion of the channel and the deposition of ore going on concurrently. 



As regards the Coal min«s in the Forest of Dean, the chief seams worked 

 are the Parkend, Churchway, Yorkley, Whittington, and Coleford high delf 

 seams. It is reported (upon some authority which we have failed to make a note 

 of) that the best pit for visitors to descend is the Trafalgar Colliery on the Serridge 

 or watershed near the Dry brook Road Station on the Severn and Wye Railway. 

 The electric light is employed in this Colliery. In the other coal mines candles 

 are used in the place of the Regulation Safety Lamp. The very remarkable 

 immunity from Fire-damp in the mines of the Forest of Dean is thus explained in 

 a note to a paper read on July 6th, 1888, by Mr. Wintour F. Gwinnell, F.R. 

 Met. S., F.A.S., published on page 528 of the "Proceedings of the Geological 

 Association," Vol. x. No. 9, November, 1888. " Thick porous sandstones overlie 

 most of the coal seams, through which the carburetted-hydrogen escapes, instead 

 of accumulating under pressure, as it does where impervious shales form the great 

 mass of the partings as they do in many other coal fields." 



