COAL 823 



Feet 

 Lower shales, coals, and iron-stones (Mortliyr) ; 266 beds, 34 beds 



of coal 812 



Abundance of iron-stone beds and Unionidce occur. 



Farewell-Kock and Gower shales above ; the carboniferous limestone below. 



The coal on the north-eastern side of the basin is of a coking quality, excellent for 

 the iron manufacture ; on the north-western it contains little or no bitumen, being 

 what is called stone-coal or anthracite ; on the south side, from Pontypool to Caermar- 

 then Bay, it is of a bituminous or binding quality. Phillips. 



SHROPSHIRE. This district includes the small coal-field of Coalbrook Dale and 

 that of the plain of Shrewsbury. The Coalbrook-Dale field, according to Mr. 

 Prestwich, has some remarkable features. (Geological Transactions.) Perhaps there 

 is no coal tract known, which in so small a compass, about twelve miles long, and, at 

 most, three and a half miles wide, exhibits so many curvatures in the outcrops, 

 crossed by so many continuous faults, some varying north by east, others east-north- 

 east ; these crossed by many of shorter length, and directed west-north-west, and in 

 several other lines. The total thickness is supposed to be 1,000 or 1,100 feet, divided 

 into 80 distinct strata. The coal varies in total thickness from 16 feet to 55, and in 

 the number of its beds from 7 to 22, the increase being to the north. The ''cleat ' or 

 system of joints runs from west-north-west to east-south-east. The coal is, for the 

 most part, of the variety called slate-coal in Scotland, and hard coal in Derbyshire. 

 Cannel coal is rare sulphureous coal (pyritous) very common. Petroleum abounds 

 in the central and upper part of the field. The beds are mostly thin ; the ten upper- 

 most are too sulphureous for other uses than lime burning, and are called stinkers ; 

 twelve beds of good coal, in all 25 feet thick, the thickest being five feet, succeed, and 

 the lowest bed of the whole formation, eight inches thick, is sulphureous. Phillips, 

 Prestwich. 



STAFFORDSHIRE. The Coal-field of South Staffordshire, which has been described 

 by Mr. J. Beete Jukes, who states, its boundary would be roughly described as the 

 space included within a boundary line drawn from Rugeley through "Wolverhampton 

 to Stourbridge ; hence to the southern end of the Bromsgrove Lickey, and returning 

 through Harborne (near Birmingham) and Great Barr back to Eugeley. This geolo- 

 gist classes these coal-strata in three divisions, by the well traced band of thick coal. 

 The total thickness of coal near Dudley being about 57 feet, and between Bilston and 

 "Wolverhampton upwards of 70 feet. The thick coal is formed of eight, ten, or thirteen 

 distinguishable parts, the whole seam varying in thickness from three feet to thirty- 

 nine feet five inches ; it is very irregular in parts, divided by sandstones, splitting with 

 wide-shaped offshoots, and cut into ' swiles ' or ' horse-backs,' which rise up from the 

 floor. Below the thick coal, are numerous beds of sandstone-shales, coal, and iron- 

 stone, having on the average a thickness of 320 feet ; and above the thick coal the 

 thickness is 280 feet on the average. Records of the School of Mines. 



North Staffordshire Coal-field. This field is comprised in the space between Con- 

 gleton, Newcastle-under-Lyne, and Lane End. About 32 beds of coal have been 

 determined, rising eastward between Burslem in the centre of the field and its eastern 

 limit near Norton Church. 



DERBYSHIRE AND NOTTINGHAMSHIRE. The Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire coals 

 are classed as to structure in two varieties, as ' hard, ' coal, in which the divisional 

 structures are chiefly derived from the planes of stratification, crossed by one set of 

 ' cleat ' or natural joints (called ' slines," ' backs,' &c.) so that large prismatic masses 

 result ; ' soft ' coal where the cleat fissures are numerous, and broken by cross cleat. 

 In respect of the quality, some of the coal is of a ' crozling ' or coking nature, easily 

 fusible and changing its figure by ' coking ' ; the rest (and this is specially the case 

 with the ' hard ' variety) makes both good furnace coal and excellent coke, which, 

 however, is hardly melted at all, and the masses are not changed in figure by the pro- 

 cess. Phillips's Manual of Geology. 



The names by which the more important beds of coal worked within this district 

 are known, are as follow : Tupton coal, hard coal, soft coal, black shale or clod coal, 

 low hard coal and low soft, windmill coal, Dansil coal, Ganister coal, Parkgate coal, 

 Aston coal, Kilburn coal, furnace coal, Ha/el coal. Eureka coal, main and deep coal. 



LEICESTERSHIRE AND WARWICKSHIRE. The Leicester coal-field is best developed 

 about Ashby-de-la-Zouch (see Mammatt on ' The coal-field of Ashby-de-la-Zouch '), 

 where the coal is much like the hard coal of Derbyshire. Amongst the seams of coal 

 is one variety called cannel ; and another, formed l>y the concurrence of more than 

 one band, from seventeen to twenty-one foot in thickness. The beds near Ashby-de-la- 

 Zouch are as follow : 



