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stances connected with the upheaval of the Mendips anticlinal, 

 and none can have failed to be deeply impressed with the 

 extraordinary physical phenomena there brought under 

 notice ; but when we pass from that range of hills to the coal 

 field adjoining, we find a state of things still more remarkable. 

 We seek in vain for anything analagous to it or approaching 

 it in interest amongst the other coal fields of this country, 

 and to find its counterpart we must cross the channel to the 

 mining districts of Belgium and France. 



The coal measures of this neighbourhood having been 

 divided by the Kingswood anticlinal into two separate basins, 

 I propose to-night to omit the more northern of these, with 

 which I have had few opportunities of becoming acquainted, 

 and to confine my remarks to the southern or Somerset basin, 

 respecting which I have had better means of obtaining infor- 

 mation. In a district which has been subjected to so many 

 alternations of upheaval and depression, in which faults 

 are so numerous that there is hardly an enclosure in the 

 length and breadth of the county which does not contain 

 several — in a district too in which so small a portion of the 

 whole area has been proved — any attempt to enumerate the 

 faults must be necessarily very incomplete ; but omitting 

 all under fifty feet, the following tabular list embraces most 

 of those at present known. It briefly describes in each 

 case the course of the fault, its size, and any other par- 

 ticulars connected mth it ; the more extraordinary faidts 

 and contortions being reserved for individual treatment 

 afterwards. 



