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Springs is the Carboniferous Limestone ; and the study of the origin 
of the Bath Thermal Springs, their course, and source of their 
chemical properties and heat, involves the study of the disturbances 
and dislocations of the Carboniferous system. It is undisputed 
that all those beds were originally deposited in an horizontal 
position ; but to-day, we find that not only in this county, but 
throughout England, Wales and the Continent, the Coal fields are 
lying in great depressions in the earth, usually termed basins. 
It has been questioned by Geologists and miners, whether 
this peculiar form is due to the strata at the margin of 
the basin being uplifted, or by depression of the centre. But when 
we come to consider the agency which has been the means of 
producing such results, there can be but little difficulty in finding 
sufficient evidence to settle this point, and I have every confidence 
in stating that our county can produce that evidence, of the 
most clear and conclusive nature. 
Probably one of the most remarkable periods of volcanic 
disturbances (there having been many similar in earlier Primary 
ages), is that which marked the close of the Carboniferous series. 
It is significant that in referring to our best writers on the Coal 
fields of this country, not a single instance occurs, where—in 
their opinion—the coal beds are found as originally deposited ; 
on the contrary, it is stated that we are indebted to those great 
disturbances for the preservation of the comparatively small 
remnant of coal left to us stored up in those depressions. 
Nature has herself revealed to us the machinery with which 
this work has been accomplished. She has swept off by the 
denuding power of the sea and other agencies, the superincum- 
bent strata, and laid bare vast tracts of granite and intrusions 
of granitic or other plutonic rocks. We have an instance of this 
in the granitic masses of Dartmoor and Cornwall. In those 
localities we often find the granite (which must of necessity have 
consolidated from the molten magma at a considerable depth 
beneath the surface,) forms the base and has given birth to 
a 
