494 ECONOMICAL QUESTIONS. CHAP. 



arranged the experience of miners ; if so, it ought not to be reproached 

 as unreasonably speculative. If it has only given back to the 

 children of labour the laws derived from their toil, this science 

 would deserve more of the attention of those who direct mining 

 operations than it actually receives. It has indeed already stopped 

 many foolish trials for coal where no good result could be expected ; 

 it has retarded, at least, experiments as yet too hazardous; and 

 it has encouraged efforts which have been successful beyond the 

 miner's hopes, and even contrary to his expectations. It may 

 be believed that we have passed the days (we are certainly fast 

 losing the memory of them) when the borings or ' coal-pits' of 

 Bruham and Radley, and Brill and Northampton, and Easing- 

 wold and Whitby, excited the ridicule of Smith and Conybeare, 

 and Bucldand and Murchison, and brought heavy expenses on 

 innocent landowners ; but we have hardly reached the epoch when 

 an English county will shew so much confidence in the attainments 

 of science as to undertake the costly and persevering operation 

 of penetrating the earth to a depth of 3000 feet in a locality 

 deliberately chosen by thoughtful geologists. Perhaps the evidence 

 taken by the Commission on the extent of our coal-fields may 

 place this great subject in a truer and more favourable light. 



Mr. Austen's remarkable Essay traces the probable continuation 

 of the long, narrow Westphalian and Belgian coal-field lying north 

 of the Ardennes, by Calais to the basin of the Thames and the 

 Kennet, from whence, perhaps with interruptions, the line may 

 be carried on to Somerset, South Wales, and Ireland. Everywhere, 

 as far as can be seen, there is on the south of this line an anticlinal 

 elevation of a date posterior to the formation of coal. 



Since the publication of his memoir, a remarkable discovery 

 by boring has been made at Harwich, where, after passing through 

 the cainozoic and cretaceous deposits, the auger penetrated a rock 

 which appeared to be of the nature of carboniferous shale, and con- 

 tained in oblique laminae a specimen of Posidonia, such as occurs 

 in strata of the upper palaeozoic age in North Devon. If a line 

 be drawn from Harwich, necessarily a line of disturbance, parallel 

 to that already traced south of the Thames basin, it will cross 

 the midland counties and pass by the Malvern Hills to the centre 

 of Wales, and leave on the north all the known fields of midland 

 coal. Such a line of deficiency of coal on the north side of the 



