THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 18] 
the inferior bed. There could be very curious chapters writ- 
ten on mineral springs, in their connection with the formations 
through which they pass. Smollett’s masterpiece, honest old 
Matthew Bramble, became thoroughly disgusted with the Bath 
waters on discovering that they filtered through an ancient 
burying-ground belonging to the Abbey, and that much of 
their peculiar taste and odor might probably be owing to the 
**10tten bones and mouldering carcasses”’ through which 
they were strained. Some of the springs of the Old Red 
Sandstone have also the churchyard taste, but the bones and 
carcasses through which they strain are much older than 
those of the Abbey burying-ground at Bath. The bitumen 
of the trap; and so it was at Tin-y-coed, for the level proceeded for 
155 feet with little or no obstacle. Mounds of soft black shale attest- 
ed the rapid progress of the adventurers, when suddenly they came 
to a ‘change of metal.’ They were now approaching the nucleus of 
the little ridge; and the rock they encountered was, as the men in- 
formed me, ‘ as hard as iron,’ viz., of lydianized schist, precisely anal- 
ogous to that which is exposed naturally in ravines where all the 
phenomena are laid bare. The deluded people, however, endeavored 
to penetrate the hardened mass, but the vast expense of blasting it 
put a stop to the undertaking, not, however, without a thorough con- 
viction on the part of the farmer, that, could he but have got through 
that hard stuff, he would most surely have been well recompensed, 
for it was just thereabouts that they began to find ‘small veins of 
coal.’ It has been before shown, that portions of anthracite are not 
unfrequent in the altered shale, where it is in contact with the intru- 
sive rock. And the occurrence of the smallest portion of anthracite 
is always sufficient to lead the Radnorshire farmer to suppose that 
he is very near ‘El Dorado.’ Amid all their failures, I never met 
with an individual who was really disheartened ; a frequent exclama- 
tion being, ‘O, if our squires were only men of syyit, we should 
have as fine coal as any in the world!’ ”” — (Silurian System, Part L., 
p- 328.) 
18 * 
