IN THE BRITISH ISLANDS. 39 



founded with indications of true coal, the futile mining has 

 been continued, until stopped by the increasing charge, or 

 by the acquisition, at an enormous price, of that knowledge of 

 the non-existence of coal in such situations, which might have 

 been obtained by a few days' study of Geology, or which some 

 early instruction in the principal facts of that science, would 

 have impressed, indelibly, upon the mind. Now among the 

 geological formations which are developed in Great Britain, 

 there are at most two only which include beds of this mineral 

 that can be worked with commercial advantage. One of these 

 is the Great Coal- Formation, situated between the two series of 

 strata called by geologists, respectively, the New Red Sandstone 

 and the Old Red Sandstone ; the other is the lower division of 

 the assemblage of clays, sands, and free-stones, called the 

 Oolitic series; which lies above the new red sandstone, and 

 consequently is much higher in the series of strata than the 

 great repository of coal just mentioned. The coal-field of the 

 Eastern Moorlands of Yorkshire, and that of Brora* in Scot- 

 land, belong to the latter formation ; but it is the former on 

 which the manufacturing industry of this island principally 

 rests ; the coal-fields of the midland counties of England, of 

 Northumberland and Durham, of Cumberland, and the prin- 

 cipal coal-fields of Scotland, are situated exclusively in it. I 

 have mentioned the deposits of coal in the Oolitic series, in 

 order to be philosophically correct in my statement on the sub- 

 ject; but in a commercial point of view they are insignificant; 

 and although the beds in Eastern Yorkshire have long been 

 known, an eminent geologist, after enumerating the various 



Eositions in the earth in which carbonaceous matter occurs, so 

 itely as the year 1822, thought it necessary to conclude with 

 the following explicit caution : 



" In thus stating the occasional occurrence of carbonaceous 

 beds in other formations, [than the Great Coal- Formation above 

 mentioned,] it is necessary carefully to guard against the error 

 of supposing that any supplies of this mineral, capable of 

 being profitably worked, are to be found anywhere without 

 the limits of the coal-district of which we are now treating; 

 an error that has led to much waste of capital in fruitless spe- 

 culation. The local deposits above mentioned [those of the 

 plastic clay, the Oolites, &c.] are objects of Geological cu- 

 riosity, not of statistical interest f." 



* For the authenticated knowledge of the true geological position of the 

 Brora coal, we are indebted to Mr. Murchison, to whose extensive research* 

 in Geology much of our present improved acquaintance with the more recent 

 regular strata is due : see Transactions of Geological Society, Second Series, 



f Conybcare : " Outlines of the Geology of England and Wales," p. 329. 



