825 COAL 



Tlio seams which arc principally worked in this district arc the high main, five- 

 quarter main, Bensham seam, Button seam, Beaumont seam, low five-quarter, three- 

 quarter seam, Brock-well, and stono coals. These seams are known by other names, 

 each district usually adopting its own peculiar term to designate the workable seams. 

 Thus the Bensham seam of the Tyno is known as the Maudlin seam of the Wear. 

 The Beaumont or Harvey seam is the Townley seam of the Townley colliery and 

 the main coal of Wylam colliery. At Hotton the high main seam of the Cramlington 

 district separates into two, and is called the three-quarter seam at Pontop ; where it 

 unites again it is known as the Shieldrow seam. The Cramlington grey seam is the 

 metal-coal seam and stone coal-seam of Sherriff Hill, where it is divided ; while it 

 unites at Hetton and forms the five-quarter seam of that and the Auckland district. 

 The Cramlington yard seam becomes the main coal-seam at Hetton, Haswell, and some 

 other localities, the Brass Thill at Pontop, and the main coal in Auckland. Again, 

 the Cramlington five-quarter seam divides and forms the six-quarter, and the five- 

 quarter at Sherriff Hill the Brass Thill seam at Pittington ; they again unite and form 

 the Hutton seam at Pontop colliery, and so with regard to a few others. Mineral 

 Statistics. 



SCOTLAND. 'A memoir on the Mid-Lothian and East-Lothian Coal-fields,' by 

 David Milne, gives the most exact account of the carboniferous system of Scotland. 

 From this description it will be seen that the Scotch coal-field extends from the 

 eastern unto the western shore. 



There are three principal coal-basins in Scotland : 1, that of Ayrshire ; 2, that of 

 Clydesdale ; and 3, that of the valley of the Forth, which runs into the second in the 

 line of the Union Canal. If two lines be drawn, one from Saint Andrews on the 

 north-east coast, to Kilpatrick on the Clyde, and another from Aberlady, in Had- 

 dingtonshire, to a point a few miles south of Kirkoswald in Ayrshire, they will 

 include between them the whole space where pitcoal has been discovered and worked 

 in Scotland. 



According to Mr. Farey there are 337 principal alternations of strata between the 

 surface in the town of Fisherow, on the banks of the Frith of Forth (where the 

 highest of these strata occur) and the commencement of the basaltic rocks, forming 

 the general floor and border of this important coal-field. These strata lie internally 

 in the form of a lengthened basin or trough, and consist of sandstone, shale, coal, 

 limestone, ironstone, &c. Sixty-two seams of coal, counting the double seams as 

 one ; 7 limestones ; 72 assemblages of stone and other strata : in all 6,000 feet in 

 thickness. 



Professor Phillips remarks of this district, ' On the whole, allowing for waste, un- 

 attainable portions,, and other circumstances, this one district may be admitted as 

 likely to yield to the miner for actual use 2,250 millions of tons of coal.' The coal 

 is partly ' splint,' partly ' rough,' or ' cherry,' partly of the ' cannel ' or ' parrot ' variety. 

 The first containing most oxygen ; the last, most hydrogen and nitrogen, and the least 

 carbon. 



IRELAND. The coal-measures of Ireland, if we include in this term the millstone 

 grit, occupy large tracts of land in that country, and are upon the whole analogous, 

 in general mineral characters and organic contents, to those of England. The same 

 absence of limestone, the samp kind of siiccessions of sandstones and shales is remarked 

 in them. Anthracite or stone-coal like that of South Wales is found in the Leinster 

 and Munster districts ; bituminous coal occurs in Connaught and Ulster. In Ulster 

 the principal collieries are at Coal Island and Dungannon. The Munster coal 

 district is stated by Mr. Griffith to be of greater extent than any English coal-field, 

 but it is much less productive. At Ballycastle the coal is found in connection with 

 basalt. Phillips. 



Mr. Hull's remark, in the ' Coal-fields of Great Britain,' ' that Ireland was once 

 covered over two-thirds of its extent by coal-fields,' is a proposition which wo may 

 confidently affirm on geological grounds; but the misfortunes of the sister isle began 

 long before the landing of Strongbow, for old father Neptune had swept the coal and 

 coal-strata clean into his lap, and left little but a bare floor of limestone behind. In 

 plain words, if we examine a geological map of Ireland, wo shall find that the carboni- 

 ferous limestone overspreads its greater part ; and as wo always find in England 

 that this formation is ultimately surmounted by coal-measures, so we may infer that 

 was the same order of succession hero, before the sea, which more than once over- 

 whelmed the count 1-7 after the carboniferous epoch remorselessly swept away the 

 more valuable portion of this system of rocks. 



The following remarks on the coal-fiolds of Ireland arc translated, by Mr. W. H. 

 Baily, from a description of them by Dr. H. B. Geinitr : 



