144 
period; but, in such a case, the coal must have existed in the 
first or upper beds of the Millstone Grit series, and that it was 
afterwards removed by denudation, with the exception of a 
small patch at Howell’s Hill, which, however, remains as a 
remnant of what existed more generally in earlier times. 
If we could determine with absolute certainty that the 
coal measures at Newent were originally deposited upon the 
Old Red Sandstone before the period assigned to the deposition 
of the Carboniferous Limestone, a point of no small interest 
and importance would have been gained. ‘The late Rev. W. 8. 
Symonds was of opinion that the Carboniferous Limestone ex- 
tended to the Malvern Hills, and we have previously stated 
that the evidence is stronger for than against that theory, and 
consequently it must have covered the whole of the Newent 
district. The coal in the Newent patch is dissimilar to that in 
the Forest of Dean. We must therefore refer its formation to 
a different epoch. Coal appears to have been extracted from 
this field at different periods. 
The Coal-field.—Hitherto shafts have not been made in 
any particular place in the Forest of Dean, directly through 
the whole of the coal measures; the sections therefore which 
have appeared have been constructed as previously noticed 
from data obtained from several different points of the district, 
but as the thickness of the strata varies with the locality, it is 
necessary that a general series of sections should be taken over 
various portions of the Mineral Basin before sufficient informa- 
tion can be obtained upon which an estimate of the average 
thickness of the strata can be made. 
The appended section, No. 3, is a record of actual sinking 
at the Lightmoor Collieries, one of the deepest in the Forest, 
and fairly represents the strata in that neighbourhood. 
The iron-ore deposits in the vicinity of Wigpool, situated 
in the Northern portion of the Mineral Basin, occupies the 
form of a horse-shoe or projection towards the North-KHast 
from the other parts of the mineral field, for a distance of at 
least 2,000 yards, taken from a point in the restored curved 
form, which it should have presented to join the outcroppings 
traced from Ruardean Kastward. 
