66( 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[September 1, 1886. 



hole, carefully examining the material brought up liy the 

 lioring tools. When I was concerned in such work the oM- 

 foshioned tools were used. These being merely "jumpers," 

 or rude chisel-ended rods of iron, which were thumped down, 

 then lifted, turned a little, and thumped down again, they 

 made their way by simply pulverising the rock. The powder 

 was removed at intervals by letting down a tube, dropping 

 it several times until it picked up l)y wedging inside the 

 pulverised material. This tube is named the '■ sludger," and 

 it is obvious that a determination of the exact character of 

 the rock by the examination of the powder or sludge is of 

 very questionable reliability. A skilful expert can find 

 almost any kind of rock he pleases, according to orders 

 received. Now, however, the use of the diamond drill 

 or auger has removed this uncertainty, solid cores of rock 

 being brought up, by which the true nature of the strata 

 can be safely identified at every stage. Even with the old 

 boring tools and sludger actual coal could, of course, be 

 di.stinguished. 



Sanguine people sometimes sink a pit at once with full 

 confidence that it must reach the coal. I watched the whole 

 proceeding in one sad experience of this kind, where the pit 

 came upon barren ground, denuded of the expected cannel 

 seam, apparently by such a process as that above de-;cribed, 

 and subsequently covered up with more than one hundred 

 yards depth of ordinary upper coal measures. As the cost 

 of sinking and lining the pair of pits ran into thousands, 

 the advantage of boring with modern appliances for obtain- 

 ing demonstrative cores is obvious. 



As a further illustration of the dangers of speculative 

 mining, I may describe another case which occurred in the 

 same neighbourhood. A good, hones*^, intelligent faruier, a 

 tenant on the Leeswood estate in Flintshire, which nearly 

 adjoins that of Hawarden, the scene of Mr. Gladstone's 

 wood cutting exploits, turned up in ploughing certain fields 

 several lumps of curly cannel. This was in 1803, when 

 there was great excitement in the neighbourhood owing to 

 the extravagant price obtained for this curly cannel on 

 account of its richness as a source of mineral oil. Instead 

 of the ordinary price of coals, six or seven shillings per ton 

 at the pit's mouth, this ran up to as high as thirty' shillings. 

 As one or two or three hundred tons per iia.y is not an ex- 

 travagant output, a net profit of one pound jier ton was 

 very tempting. I h.adjust arrived in the neighbourhood; 

 the farmer showed me some of the pieces of cannel he had 

 turned up ; there was no mistake about their composition. 

 He obtained a take-note from his landlord, and was 

 nearly ruined, spent his hard-earned savings in struggling 

 to prove the coal-seam, which was not under any part of 

 the farm, although more and more cannel was found in its 

 soil. 



I afterwards, during a residence of a few years in the 

 neighbourhood, made a careful study of the details of its 

 geological features, and discovered that the whole country 

 around had been remarkably glaciated, all the lower levels 

 being covered with moraine mounds, the upper denuded of 

 its coal measures, and the millstone grit laid bare. I found 

 great ma-sses of limestone in railway cuttings and embank- 

 ments many miles away from any limestone rocks, and 

 great sandstone boulders, the sulijects of curious legends, 

 standing upon the cultivated soil, or partially buried therein.* 

 The histoiy of these was levealed by the striation and 

 smoothing of one or more of their sides. (I read a paper 

 on the subject to the Geological section of the British Asso- 



* On the Ordnance map of Flintshire is the name "Garreglwyd " 

 (the grpy stones), near to Padeswood Station. Two very remarkable 

 glaciated boulder.s of millstone grit, that have given this name to 

 the farm, may there be seen standing in a field by the roadside. 



ciation, 18G5, an abstract of which is printed in their 

 report.) When the Wrexham and Mold Railway was in 

 course of construction, boulders of cannel were found in the 

 Alyn valley near to Hope, and the workmen used them for 

 their cooking fires. I succeeded in saving a fragment of 

 one of these, and have it still. The nearest seam of cannel 

 to the place where this was found is more than four miles 

 distant, and between is the Hope Mountain, a mass of mill- 

 stone grit rising 1,000 feet above sea-level and about 700 

 feet above the local valleys. 



Had I known these facts earlier I might have saved the 

 good farmer fi'om the losses which broke him down. Pos- 

 sibly their publication in Knowledge may save others 

 from similar disaster, as other minerals besides coal have 

 been carried long distances down valleys, over plains, 

 and across mountains by the great glaciers that formerly 

 overspread so large a part of Europe. At any rate, such 

 facts are interesting to all students of the history of our 

 home planet. I am sufficiently irreverent and unlearned to 

 believe that outdoor study of the moraine mounds upon 

 which the trees of Hawarden Park are growing, and of the 

 relations of these to the country around, v,ould be a more 

 healthful recreative study for an overworked statesman thau 

 the translating of overdone Homer. 



Let us now suppose that a seam of coal is by careful 

 boring fully proved on an estate which has never been 

 worked for coal before, and that the whole estate is to be 

 opened out for working. 



The next step demanded is to ascertain the inclination of 

 the .seam. This, if corresponding to that of the strata above, 

 is easily determined by what is known of them. To make 

 sure of this, if doubtful, two or more borings may be made, 

 and thus the supposed direction and inclination of the slope 

 may be confirmed. I find that many people — in fact, most 

 people who have not previou.sly given attention to this sub- 

 ject — suppose tliat the part of the seam nearest to the surface, 

 and the most easily reached, will be first attacked ; but the 

 contrary is the case. The very deepest part of the coal on 

 the area to be worked is that to which the pits from which 

 it is worked must, in ordinary cases, be sunk. The reason 

 for this is simple enough. 



Ordinary coal measures are water-bearing strata, and if 

 the miner began at the up[)er part of an inclined seam, he 

 would presently have to dive and to work under v/ater ; by 

 begiuning at the lower part and m.aking a "sumph," that is, 

 sinking his pit to some depth below the bottom of the seam 

 he intends to work, the water runs down into the sumph, 

 from which he pumps it, and thus the whole seam, so far as 

 he is concerned, is drained for working. Besides this, the 

 trollies that bring the coal to the bottom of the shaft all 

 run down inclined roads when loaded, and up the inclines 

 when empty. 



I say " so far as he is concerned," and that he works from 

 the deepest part of his own area, but where others own im- 

 portant parts of the seam above him the conditions become 

 perple.xing if there is much water and the cost of pumping 

 Ls great. He must either pump away his neighbour's water 

 as well as his own, or be " drowned out." The rational and 

 equitable course to be followed in such ca.ses is to pump 

 from below bv co-operation ; but although man is described 

 in biological classification ushomo sapiens — as a rational and 

 moral being — he does not always justify such description ; 

 and hence there are landlords even in England who leave the 

 coal upon their estates unworked rather than subscribe their 

 fair share towards co-operative drainage of the whole field, 

 lioping that some neighbour lower down in the seam will do 

 for them what the industrious and thi'ifty ratepayer does for 

 the lazy, improvident, or incapable inmates of the union 

 workhouse. These gi-eedy would-be pauper landlords have. 



