TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 615 



our knowledge of the subject in one or otlierof its various aspects, both by original 

 research ^ and by condensing published results in treatises and manuals for stude°nts,* 

 we have had some of the most enthusiastic students of the natural history of the 

 Carboniferous strata and fossils iu our own country and within our own times. 

 Their names must frequently occur in speaking of coal and its belongings. 



The text-books and manuals of geology by De la Beche, Phiflips, Trimmer, 

 Lyell, Ansted, Jukes, Geikie, Prestwich, Green, Etheridge, and others, are safe 

 guides; the Memoirs of the Geological Surveys of England and Wales, Scot- 

 land, Ireland, and India are mines of scientific wealth as regards the same matter • 

 our paltEobotanists Lindley, Hutton, Artis, A^'itham, Morris, Hooker, Binney^ 

 Bunbury, Dawes, Williamson, Oarruthers, Balfour, Kidston, &c., have given us "-ood 

 results; and others, not specialists, have written good matter for our consideration. 

 Abroad, among our American friends, we have, or have had, several of the State 

 geologists (Emmons, Lesquereux, Rogers, Lesley, Newberry, Dana), who have 

 studied the Coal-measures with care, besides Steiuhauer, Brown, and others ; but 

 no one has so earnestly and successfully given his serious attention to this branch 

 of geology and paleontology as Sir J. W. Dawson, of Montreal, not long since 

 President of the British Association when we met at Birmingham in 1886. His 

 numerous memoirs and his elaborate work on ' Acadian Geology ' supply abun- 

 dant facts and sound theories iu elucidation of the history of the Coal Period. 

 Sir ^y. E. Logan, who indeed by his studies in South Wales was the first to give 

 geologists a clue to the uiterpretation of much that was verv obscure about coal, 

 worked with Sir J. W. Dawson in the Nova-Scotiau coal-field ; and so also did 

 Sir Charles Lyell, who there and elsewhere devoted much energy and acumen to 

 the elucidation of the origin and formation of coal. 



The indexes of successive volumes of the ' Geological Record ' show how abun- 

 dant have been papers and books on Coal, Coal-mines, Coal-fields, Carboniferous 

 fossils, and correlative studies, within the last few years, abroad and at home. The 

 subject^ is so extensive that we must confine ourselves to the coal of South Wales. 

 '2. The Coal-Jleld of South Wales, as studied bij Lor/an, De la Beche, and 

 others.— Kb,^ it been that the stone axe found in Moimiouthshire by Edward 

 Lloyd ^ were really associated with the outcrop of the coal there, and it truly be- 

 longuig to the Stone-age and used in hewing the coal, as Professor Hnll's mention 

 of it seems to imply,' it would, indeed, have been one amono- the few known 

 evidences of prehistoric coal-mining, and would tend to show that South Wales 

 was among the places first made to yield this useful mineral. 



At the present day South Wales and Monmouthshire yield coal in greater 

 quantity and of more value (by over a million poimds sterling a year) than the 

 coal-fields of Northumberland and Durham, or of Yorkshire and Derbyshire ; and 

 considerably more (by nearly 6,000,000^.) than that of the Clyde Basin and asso- 

 ciated coal-fields of Scotland. Indeed, the annual value of the coal produced in 

 South Wales with Monmouthshire may be said to be about eleven millions out 

 ot the whole forty-five millions sterling estimated as the value of the coal at the 

 pit's mouth throughout the United Kingdom. 



The great coal-field of South Wales has the especial credit of having supplied 

 some of the earliest and most important facts and phenomena illustrative of the 

 geological succession of the materials of the Coal-measures, and of the natural 

 history of the coal itself. To the persevering energy and accurate observation of 

 Sir William E. Logan and Sir Henry T. De la Beche South AVales gave up the 

 secrets of coal-growth, strengthening some earlier suppositions, correcting others, 



I Especially Sternberg, Brongniart, Goeppert, I'etzholdt, Geinitz, Unger, Schimper, 

 Weiss, Renault, and Graud'Eury. 



- Omalius d'Halloy, Leonhard and Hoernes, Vogt, C. D'Orbigny and Gente, 

 Beudant, Credner, Lapparent, Contjean, and others. 



* 'In a steep rock called Craig y park, and others in the parish of Istrayd 

 Dyvodog, we observed divers veins of coal, exposed to sight as naked as the rock ; 

 and found a flint axe, somewhat like those used by the Americans' (Phil. 

 Trans., vol. xxviii., 1711, p. 501 ; in a letter dated September 22, 1697). 



* The Coalfields, &c., 4th edit., p. 12. 



