246 GLIMPSES OF NATURE. 



were supposed to afford the best chance of getting at 

 the strata below ; but this work had to be abandoned 

 on account of an accident to the boring tubes, after 

 some 1900 feet of strata had been passed through. 

 In the London district a noteworthy observation 

 showed that Devonian rocks older than the Coal had 

 been met with at about 1000 feet from the surface. 

 Clearly, then, it was a hopeful enough prospect to 

 expect that the Coal itself might be met with under 

 similar and favourable auspices. 



The boring operations, as all the world knows, were 

 duly resumed at Dover, and the section made at 

 Shakspeare's Cliff began with the Lower Grey Chalk, 

 and, after 500 feet, passed to the end of that formation. 

 Then succeeded 660 feet of thickness of strata, belong- 

 ing to the Oolite rocks, which, as we saw, lie below the 

 Chalk. The crucial point came next in order. What 

 lay below the Oolite formation and beneath the 

 Bathonian measures which formed the lowest set of 

 Oolitic age ? The reply of the boring came clear and 

 distinct in a single word, Coal. 



Professor Boyd Dawkins, who has all along taken 

 a deep interest in the solution of this interesting 

 problem of geology, tells us that the coal measures at 

 Dover were struck at a distance of 1 1 80 feet from the 

 top of the bore-hole. This is 68 feet below the point 

 at which the coal was met with in the Calais borings. 

 The Wealden strata, he further tells us, are thinned 

 off in a remarkable manner, inasmuch as they are seen 

 at Hythe and Folkestone, but at Dover are wanting, 

 and this absence of the Weald rendered the work of 

 getting at the coal all the more favourable. 



The Dover coal is said to be of good blazing variety, 

 and one may, therefore, anticipate the time when Kent 



