238 ON THE GEOLOGY OF THE NORTHERN PART 
to affording the inquirer any information on the subject. From 
what I could collect, the beds of coal are very numerous, and seve- 
ral of them upwards of six feet in thickness; but, if the different 
accounts were correct, great changes must take place, both in the 
thickness of the different beds, and the distances between them in 
different parts of the field. Mr. Heath, of Kidcrew, was kind 
enough to give me a section of the Hurecastle tunnel, in which a 
total thickness of upwards of three thousand feet of coal measures 
was cut through, containing twenty-eight beds of coal, whose thick- 
ness was altogether between sixty and seventy feet, and in which 
section neither the highest nor the lowest known beds are included. 
As, however, no mention is made of the occurrence of faults, I think 
there must probably be some mistake, and that some faults must 
have been unobserved by which a repetition of some of the beds was 
occasioned, producing this apparently enormous thickness of mea- 
sures. The position of the beds in this coal-field is highly remark- 
able. Along the whole of the eastern portion, from Biddulph, 
through Burslem and Hanley, to Lane End, the beds dip west at an 
angle of 33°, on the average ; but on proceeding two or three miles 
in that direction the beds are found to rise again, and in the country 
between Newcastle and Kidcrew they dip to the east at a similar 
angle. On the extreme western boundary of the district, however, 
they again recover their westerly dip, and plunge under the new 
red sandstone plain of Cheshire. About Kidcrew and Talk-o’-the- 
Hill the beds are greatly broken and shattered, one portion lying 
horizontal, perhaps, whilst its immediate neighbours dip E. or W. 
at the rate sometimes of eleven inches in twelve, or nearly 45°.* 
The direction of the chief line of fracture coincides with that of the 
ridge of hills called Mole Cop, Congleton Edge, and Cloud ; and on 
examining these we find still stronger evidence of the action of the 
disturbing power. Along the W. side of Mole Cop, the upper beds 
of the mountain limestone begin to shew themselves near the base 
of the hill, and are worked at one or two points, having the shale 
above them, which is capped by the millstone grit. These two lat- 
ter rocks compose the remainder of the ridge, their beds dipping to 
the E. and forming a clear escarpment to the W. Along this part 
of its course, then, the elevating force has not merely tilted the beds 
into a highly inclined position, and left them leaning against each 
other, as it were, for support, but has broken them clean through 
* The workmen call the E. and W. inclinations “ the Staffordshire dip” 
and “ the Cheshire dip” respectively. 
