38 



one is driven to the conclusion that his main inducement to under- 

 take such work was that it gave him access to facts otherwise 

 unattainable. 



This work was chiefly concerned with coal-mining, with 

 foundations, and with water-supply both over and under ground. 

 He took keen interest in it, not only on its geological side but in the 

 problems of engineering, transport, and industry involved. His 

 knowledge of the South Staffordshire and Warwickshire Coal- 

 fields became very complete as regards the floor on which they 

 rest, the red-rock cover, and the constitution and variation of the 

 Measures themselves. There were few of the more critical and 

 experimental enterprises, where the problem was complicated by 

 faulting or unconformity, which did not have the advantage of his 

 guidance, and he secured not a few triumphs by his accurate 

 predictions, or by his cautious advice. It was in the course of 

 this work that he began collecting information for a contour map 

 of the ' Thick Coal ' work taken up later and brought to a 

 successful issue by his friend, Mr. Wickham King. 



I. The Midland Coalfields. 



This extensive knowledge proved of exceptional value to the 

 Second Coal Commission (1902-1905), of which he was a member. 

 He took a very active part in the whole enquiry, undertaking more 

 especially the details of the central group of coalfields (district 

 "B"), and writing a lucid and masterly account of the inter- 

 relations of these fields and their probable continuation as ' concealed 

 coalfields ' in the areas intervening between them. His description 

 of the area given in the Commission's Report* was put into graphic 

 form and dealt with in very lucid fashion in a paper to the 

 Institution of Mining Engineers, f 



The area is bounded east and west by the Shropshire and the 

 Leicestershire ' platforms/ the latter mainly buried, the former 

 better exposed. Between them lies the anticline of the South 

 Staffordshire Coalfield with the Birmingham Basin on one side 

 of it and the Wolverhampton Basin on the other. To the northward 

 lies the Staffordshire Basin dividing the South Staffordshire Coal- 

 field from the southern end of the Pennine Chain. The parts of 

 these Basins which may be regarded as ' proved' are marked off, and 

 then the likelihood or otherwise, of the extension of Coal Measures 

 in the residual areas is worked out and calculated. All existing 

 evidence on the behaviour of the Coal Measures themselves, 

 especially in relation to their conditions of formation, the character 

 of the floor in which they were formed, the nature and thickness 

 of the red-rock cover, and the folding, fracture, and other accidents 



* 64. f 66, pp. 26 50. 



