THE GONUWANA FORMATION 253 



improbable that such is the case. For example, the Ferrar Glacier Valley was 

 carefully explored by Armitage, by Ferrar, and other members of the Discovery 

 Expedition under Captain Scott, and yet, with the exception of some carbonaceous 

 laminae in places in the sandstone, no seams of coal were met with either in situ or 

 in the morainic material. As a matter of fact, the only portion of this 12,000 square 

 miles of the Beacon Sandstone formation which has as yet proved to be actually coal- 

 bearing is the Buckley-Bartlett Nunatak at the head of the Beardmore Glacier, the 

 total area of which is about 100 square miles. There can, therefore, be no reasonable 

 doubt that the exposed portions of the Beacon Sandstone with the occasional coal 

 seams form but an insignificant selvage to a vast coalfield thrown down to the west of 

 the great horst, and now buried to a depth of probably from 1000 to 2000 feet under 

 ice. In order to reach the coal in this vast field it would at present be necessary to 

 sink shafts through the ice for the full amount of the thickness of the ice, say about 

 1500 feet, then if the overlying cover of 500 feet of sandstone were present the shaft 

 would have to be continued a farther depth equal to that amount, that is, a total depth 

 of at least 2000 feet, at which depth the first seam of coal might perhaps be reached. 

 If the thickness of the productive coal-measures as observed at the Buckley-Bartlett 

 Nunatak is maintained under the down-faulted plateau west of the great horst, in 

 a farther depth of 300 feet, that is, a total depth of 2300 feet below the surface, the 

 whole of the productive coal-measures might be penetrated. The great difficulty 

 of keeping open a workable shaft in slowly-moving glacier ice would be of course at 

 present prohibitive, if attempts were made to reach this vast coalfield under this ice 

 carapace. If metallic minerals of economic value are discovered in the rocks of the 

 great horst in the near future, as is nearly certain, and attempts are made to convert 

 the region into a second Alaska, probably a sufiiciency of coal will be found in the 

 rocks of the horst to last for all the needs of the region for a long time to come. 



Such coal-measures could be worked by means of adits, the coal being allowed to 

 descend by gravitation. It is of course premature, until good average samples are 

 obtained from the whole thickness of these coal seams, to say whether any of them 

 are really workable. Traced from Brazil through the Rio Grande Do Sul and the 

 Serra Geral towards the Ai'gentine in the neighbourhood of Sierra de Cordoba the 

 Gondwana coal-measures yield only thin seams having a high jjercentage of ash. 

 The appended section taken from the report by Dr. White is inserted for comparison. 



Thicknesses of the various seams in descending order at one part of the Santa 



Catarina basin are as follows : — 



0'60 metre 

 1'60 „ 

 0-60 „ 

 015 „ 

 0-80 „ 

 0-30 „ 



405 metres = about 1.3 feet. 



2 K 



