40 FRUITLESS AND EXPENSIVE ATTEMPTS TO DISCOVER 



Three years only have elapsed, since a circumstance occur- 

 red, to myself, which strongly impressed my mind with the 

 utility of geological information to landed proprietors, in re- 

 lation to this very subject. In the course of a geological 

 examination of the Brill hills in Buckinghamshire, which are 

 composed of strata belonging to the upper oolitic system, 

 capped by the iron-sand, a still more recent deposit, I was 

 surprised, when descending the hill on which is situated the 

 village giving name to the entire group, towards a chalybeate 

 spring which rises in the vale separating that from the neigh- 

 bouring eminence of Dorton Camp, to observe a shaft, which 

 had been sunk into the hill-side, and the heaps of clay, &c. that 

 had been raised from it, together with the remains of the whim 

 or horse-windlass used for drawing them up. I was informed 

 by an inhabitant of Brill, practically well acquainted with 

 the geology of this chain, and with the mineral substances it 

 affords, that an attempt to discover coal had been made in 

 this spot, and that the shaft before me had been sunk to the 

 depth of 116 feet, but that nothing more than bituminous 

 shale (slaty clay impregnated with mineral pitch) had been 

 found. This result a Geologist would immediately have anti- 

 cipated ; and my own examination of the strata in the vicinity, 

 though I met with nothing previously unknown to science, 

 rendered it still more surprising that true coal should ever have 

 been expected to be discovered in them. What rendered the 

 case more striking was the circumstance, which I also learned 

 on the spot, that the same person who had conducted this un- 

 profitable attempt, had also conducted two others, at Sunning 

 Well near Oxford, and at Bagley Wood, near Farringdon in 

 Berkshire; in all three instances in the same stratum, (the Kim- 

 meridge Clay of Geologists,) and, in all, at the expense of the 

 proprietors of the land *. I shall now quit the subject with the 

 simple remark, that in every case of this description which 

 I have mentioned or alluded- to, the expense, the mortification, 

 and all the other evils inseparable from an abortive attempt 

 to obtain a valuable material, would have been avoided, had 

 those who were legitimately interested in them, possessed some 

 definite acquaintance with the Geology of the British Islands -f. 



* The latter two of these attempts are mentioned by Mr. Conybeare, 

 " Outlines/' p. 178. 



f Should this memoir fall into the hands of any persons who may be 

 about to institute researches for coal, in consequence of having observed 

 the supposed indications of its existence alluded to in the text, an additional 

 caution may be found useful, which will also serve to show, that the know- 

 ledge required, in order to avoid being misled into operations so expensive 

 and so unavailing, can be communicated only by instruction in the science 

 of Geology. 



Geologists and chemists have informed us, that every species of bi- 



