108 DK. REDFERN, ON THE TORBANEHILL 



Above that is a bed of shale, varying in thickness up to 

 four feet. Immediately below the bed is a stratum of 

 fire-clay, with occasional ironstone-balls, about two inches 

 thick, and very full of the impressions of plants. Under that 

 is a layer of good bright-looking coal of six inches in tliick- 

 ness. Occasionally a thin layer of common coal runs through 

 the cannel, and is v.ariable in thickness. It appears, there- 

 fore, that the bed is in a similar geological position to that of 

 other cannel coals. 



In working the coal, it is got in rhomboidal blocks, ex- 

 tending through the whole thickness of the seam, and mea- 

 suring from six to sixteen inches in breadth, and from five to 

 fifteen in depth (back). The fracture perpendicular to the 

 plane of stratification is conchoidal, that parallel to the same 

 plane is slaty. The colour is of a light bi'own, and the streak 

 yellow and dull in the upper part of the seam ; in the lower 

 part the colour is, in many specimens, as dark and lustrous as 

 that of many other cannels, and the streak varies in a like 

 proportion. 



VVhen viewed chemically (I now quote from the evidence 

 of Dr. Geoi'ge Wilson, one of the pursuer's witnesses at the 

 late jury trial), " There is no ingredient in common coal that 

 is not at all present in the Torbane mineral. There is no 

 ingredient in Torbane mineral that is entirely absent from all 

 known coals." 



But there are some chemical peculiarities. .The quantity 

 of earthy matter is large, 1 8 per cent. ; but many well-known 

 coals contain a still larger quantity. The fixed carbon is 

 small in quantity, but analyses of other coals have shown less ; 

 and the total carbon is quite equal to that in other cannel 

 coals — 65^ per cent. (Hoffman and Stenhouse). The hydro- 

 gen is in very large quantity (7^ to 9 per cent.), but even in 

 this particular the Methill coal approaches very closely ; for 

 Professor Anderson found 7*54 per cent, in it. 



The following tables, copied from a paper by my esteemed 

 friend Dr. Fyfe, published by the Royal Scottish Society of 

 Arts, will be found of great value in comparing the Torbane- 

 hill with other coals. To the whole of that paper I may refer 

 as a statement of a mass of facts, unquestionably prt)ving that 

 the Torbanehill mineral is similar in every chemical relation 

 to other coals. 



On this table Dr. Fyfe remarks : " That the proportion of 

 volatile matter of the coals varies from about 37 to nearly 67 

 per cent, ; of course the coke varies from about 33 to 63. The 

 proportion of fixed carbon and of ash in the coke also varies ; 



