WEST PURBECK MEETING. Ixvii. 



liked to take the party to Worbarrow, because there they 

 obtained the best section of the Purbeck beds. The rolling 

 hills of that part of the Isle were one great feature of it ; but 

 they did not see what those rolls were made of. At Worbarrow, 

 however, they could see the whole thing, for there they obtained 

 an end section, as it were, of all the beds. At the foot of the 

 precipice they had the Kimmeridge clay in the lowest place. 

 Then, ascending, they came to the Portland sands and Portland 

 rock, which formed the mass of the precipice of Gadcliff, and 

 which in some places was very fossiliferous. That Portland 

 rock was a very different development from the Portland rock in 

 the Isle of Portland. He believed that there was little or no 

 building stone in it. It consisted of a lot of coarse limestone 

 full of flints, with fossil beds at the top. The building stone at 

 Winspit and Tilly Whim was not developed in that part of the 

 Portland series. Immediately succeeding the Portland beds 

 came the Lower Purbecks, which were very interesting. If they 

 had gone to Pondfield Cove, they would have had an extremely 

 fine section of them. Dirt-beds, marls, and limestone constituted 

 these peculiar beds, as at Lulworth and Stair Hole. The great 

 Isle of Purbeck thrust-fault, to which he had alluded at Creech 

 Barrow, had brought the Lower Purbeck Beds into these curious 

 sigmoidal folds. The Middle Purbecks were very fossiliferous. 

 There was in them a well-known hard bed called the cinder bed. 

 Speaking parenthetically, " Cinder" reminded him of coal. 



COAL IN DORSET. 



That morning some small specimens of coal were placed in 

 his hand which, he was told, were found recently in the course of 

 boring a well on Lord Salisbury's estate at Cranborne. At a depth 

 of 90 feet in boring through the chalk, it was said, a man struck 

 a seam of coal 5 inches thick embedded in the chalk. The coal 

 was said to be of good quality. When he first read the announce- 

 ment of the find in the papers, he thought that it might possibly 

 be lignite, such as was found in great abundance in the Tertiary 

 clays, as in the neighbourhood of Creech Barrow. It certainly 

 was not lignite ; but what it was one could not judge from 



