100 ]\h. Farei/s Geological Ohservalions 



Scclion begins (and proceeds downwards further even than 

 Mr. Forstcr's), and by this means, make ihe Coal and the 

 Lead districts of Northumberland, Durham, and York- 

 shire to have no immediate or known rehilion to each other 

 in the series, I am unable to say at present: but certainly 

 this is one of several suppositions that ought to be fully 

 tried, by an actual survey, before admitting the identity of 

 such verv ditferent series of strata as compose the Lead 

 districts of Derbyshire, and the Counties above mentioned. 

 But I return to the measures in Yorkshire, E of the great 

 eastern Fault, t!iat basset frou) under the Oalite Limestone, 

 and occupy a space more or less wide on the SW and N 

 sides o\ that limestone tract, from near Westow on the 

 SSW of Maltou, by Spitial-bridge, Shcrilf-rlutton, Cox- 

 wold, Thirsk, Northanenon,Sli)kcsley,Gisborough, Marsk, 

 Danbv, Lylh, Whitby, Goadland, Cloughton, Scarborough, 

 &c. &c. and have to mention that I find these, after a care- 

 ful examination of the Country about Lyth (on which I in- 

 tend to say more at a luture opportunity) to be Coal-mea- 

 sures, and consider them not less remarkable as occurring 

 in a much higher pari of' the British series, than had hi- 

 therto been supposed to contain any vegetal impressions 

 or other triae indications of Coal*, than as containing nu- 



* Candour and truth require, lliat I should here recall seme too confident 

 and hasty expressionf, on what I liad been led to think a true position, viz. 

 that no distinct small vci^ejid im pressings like those of the Conl-measures, 

 were to be found in the British Series aliovc the Lias and Red Marl, as I have 

 said in the articIei("ou/, and some others in Dr. Recs's Cyclopaedia, and in Dr. 

 Dickson's Agricultural Magazine, vol i. p. 11'), and vol. ii. p. :iO, the latter 

 in answer to a defender of ihe disastr^)us scheme of siiikini^ for Goals at 

 Bexhill in Sussex; and it is somewhat singular, that the call or challenge 

 which I therein gave (p. 31) to produce a single specimen of such im- 

 pressions found at Bexhill, or in any upper [lart of the series of strata, has 

 not had the cfFect of obtaining either public or private information of such 

 an instance, until I »aw the strata in tiie north of Yorkshire, above alluded 

 to in Jvily last. I now however think it highly probable, that the strata 

 around Battel, and eastward ot it in Sussex, belong to these Coal-measure'^ 

 (though I saw no vegetal impressions there) and that the appearances of 

 thin scam of Coal seen N of Court-lodga in Mountfield, 11 of Mountfield, 

 at Darvel-furnace near Robertsbridgc, Silver-hill near Salehurst, &c. which 

 I heard of in ISOG, but referred to imperfect accounts of //i/oc/-6^oui or bitu- 

 minated Vv\)od in the Pipe Clay stratum (below the Chalk, and not above it, 

 as I now understand the Clay of Purbeck to bei : but without much altering 

 mv opinion oi the improbabilily of discovering even one useful scani of Coal 

 at Bexhill, or in any other part of Sussex. I further think, that the appcar- 

 ances of Coals tiiat have been mentioned at Brill N of Thame, Soutiicote 

 near Leighton Buzzard, in Stone-lane, between Lcighton and Woburn iu 

 Bedfordshire, near Bolingbrokc in Lincolnshire, and iu numerous other places, 

 in the range of the Cl'uuh Clny, are to be referred to these Coal-measures, 

 instead of bituminated Wood or Clay, as Mr. Smith and myself used to 

 think; a conjecture of which coincidence of the Chuich-Clay and the Alum 

 Shale, 1 offered at p. 25<), of your 35tb vilame. 



mcrous 



