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you more minutely than I have yet done the information we pos- 
sess on the subject, and I hope to satisfy you that however they 
may have come to occupy their present position they are super- 
ficial masses of no great thickness, that they do not extend down- 
wards to connect with the great underlying stratum of Mountain 
Limestone, and that the Coal Measures have actually been worked 
beneath them at various points. 
To begin with the Luckington patch ; some years ago a branch 
or “gallery” was driven northwards from the Mackintosh pit at a 
depth of 250 yards from the surface, cutting the Dunny drift vein 
at a distance of 320 yards from the shaft. The vein rose to the 
north at an angle of forty-three degrees, and in following it 
upwards the workings gradually passed beneath the Limestone as 
shown by cross hatching on the large diagram. In this instance 
it was clearly proved that an area of coal 150 yards in length and 
varying from five to thirty yards in width had actually been 
worked beneath the Limestone. The branch itself has since been 
continued to the northwards, passing right under the patch from 
the southern to the northern side, cutting bed after bed of the 
Coal Measures which although more tender than usual are quite 
unbroken, and meeting with no Limestone whatever. In all this 
there has been no trace whatever of an anticlinal, and the only fault 
of any importance is the one shewn in the diagram. 
It may be remarked, that on examining the surface, I find the 
Limestone at Luckington surrounded by the remains of six small 
pits, the débris consisting of ordinary Coal Measure shales. 
Between Luckington and Upper Vobster occur the workings of 
the Newbury pit, from which, at a depth of 240 yards from the 
surface, a branch has been driven 500 yards to the northwards, 
passing considerably beyond the range of the Limestones. If an 
anticlinal had existed on their northern side, we ought to have 
had evidence of it here, but there is none whatever. 
With regard to the Upper Vobster area, assuming Mr. Sanders’ 
outcrop to be correct, the eastern workings on the Dunny drift 
