672 REPORT — 1895, 



are older than the Coal Measures, and the Trias is thin, not reaching indeed to 

 90 feet in thickness, and being- absent in one case. At one place, too, the 

 Carboniferous beds have been pierced through, with a thickness of only 222 feet, 

 when Old Red Sandstone was found, and in another place still older rock seems to 

 have been found next beneath the Trias. The depth to the rocks older than the 

 Trias, where they were reached, was 677, 738, and 790 feet, or respectively 

 39-5, 460, and 310 below sea-level. Some of these figures must be taken as 

 somewhat approximate, though they are near enough to the truth for practical 

 purposes. 



A boring at Bletchley, to the south, reached granitic rocks at the depths of 

 378| and 401 feet ; but these rocks seem to be only boulders in a Jurassic clay : 

 their occurrence, however, is suggestive of the presence of older rocks at the 

 surface no great way off, in Middle .Jurassic times. 



Much further northward, at Scarle, south-west of Lincoln, the older rocks 

 have been reached at the depth of about 1,500 feet, all but 141 of which are Trias, 

 and they begin with the Permian (which crops out some eighteen miles west- 

 ward), the Carboniferous occurring after another 400 feet, and liaving been pierced 

 to 130. 



We have then evidence that over a large part of South-Eastern England, 

 reaching northward and westward of the London Basin, though the older rocks 

 are hidden by a thick mantle of Jurassic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary beds, yet 

 they seem to be rarely at a depth that would be called very great by the coal- 

 miner. They are distinctly within workable depths wherever they have been 

 reached. 



There is no area of old rocks at the surface in our island, south of the Forth, 

 in which Coal Measures are not a constituent formation. Truly, further north, in the 

 great tract of Central and Northern Scotland there are no Carboniferous rocks ; 

 but we can hardly say that none ever occurred, at all events in the more southern 

 parts. We know, though, that on the west and north Jurassic and Triassic beds 

 rest on formations older than the Carboniferous. 



It is not, however, to this more northern and distant tract that we should look 

 for analogy to our underground plain of old rocks ; rather should we look to more 

 . southern parts, to Wales and to Central and Northern England, where Coal 

 Measures are of frequent occurrence. On the principle of reasoning from the 

 known to the unknown, I cannot see why we should expect anything but a like 

 occurrence of Coal Measures, in detached basins, in our vast underground tract of 

 old rocks. 



What, then, is the evident conclusion from what we know and from what we 

 may reasonably infer ? Surely that trials should be made to see if such hiddea 

 coal-basins can be found. 



One trial has been made, and it has succeeded ; the Dover bo"ing has proved 

 the presence of coal underground in Eastern Kent, along the line between the 

 ooal-fields of South Wales and of Bristol on the west, and those of Northern 

 France and of Belgium on the east. 



The long gap between the distant outcrops of the Coal Measures near Bristol 

 and Calais has been lessened very slightly by the working of coal under the 

 Triassic and Jurassic beds near the former place, but much more by our brethren 

 across the narrow sea, the extent of the Coal Measures beneath the Jurassic and 

 Cretaceous beds, having not only been proved by the French and the Belgians 

 alono- their borders, but the coal bavins: been largely worked. At last, we too 

 have still further decreased the gap, by the Dover boring, a work that I trust is to 

 be followed by other work along the same Ime. 



But is this the only line along which we are to search ? Are we to conclude 

 that the only coal-fields under our great tract of Cretaceous beds (where these are 

 either at the surface or covered by Tertiary beds) are in Kent, Surrey, and other 

 counties to the west ? Have we no coal-fields but those of Bristol and of South 

 Wales? The bounds of our midland and northern coal-fields have been extended 

 by exploration beneath the New Red Series ; are we to stop here and to assume 

 that there can be no further underground extension of the Coal Measures south- 



