COAL AT DOVER. 245 



of boring capable of being carried out by human 

 appliances. 



Yet there is one consideration which comes to the 

 aid of the geologist, who has to face many problems 

 of very perplexing kind. What should we say, let us 

 ask, if certain of the rocks lying in the natural order 

 of things, between the Coal and the Chalk, happened 

 to be absent ? What if the Trias and Oolite, together 

 with the older and scarcer Permian, had somehow or 

 other slipped out of the series altogether ? What if 

 some geological cataclysm had swept them away, so 

 that at Dover and elsewhere the earth should see the 

 faces of these rocks no more for ever ? Clearly, if 

 these suppositions possess any grains of reality at all, 

 the effect of the thinning away of the rocks between 

 the Coal and the Chalk would practically be to bring 

 these two formations into relatively close proximity. 



Now, this is precisely what we know has occurred 

 elsewhere. Mr. Godwin Austen long ago, told 

 geologists that, from his study of the coalfields of 

 Somerset and South Wales, and of Belgium and 

 Northern France as well, he was certain coal also lay 

 buried under the rocks of the intervening regions. If 

 this idea were to be entertained, then it followed that 

 underneath the white cliffs of Dover there was a pos- 

 sibility of coal being found. The only question re- 

 maining then came to be, Could it be reached from 

 the surface so as to make it available for the use of 

 man ? Again there was support for this idea in the 

 fact that coal is being worked in both France and 

 Belgium, beneath the same chalk rocks which environ 

 our shores. 



There had been borings carried on in Sussex in the 

 Wealden formations, which, as the lowest of the Chalk, 



