618 REPORT— 1891. 



define the place and range of this old coal-growth of what is now Western 

 Europe as — 



' An internal sea, around and occasionally over large parts of which the 

 peculiar vegetation of the time was developed and entombed as the area rose and 

 sank. A region with a central depressed area, such as Australia is supposed to 

 present, and going down, by means of a long series of oscillations, would ultimately 

 present just such an assemblage of deposits as our own Carboniferous group ' (p. 73). 



A further reference to this kind of le"\'el or hollow region is as follows : — 



' The large level tracts which lie west of the Blue Mountains in Austi-alia, into 

 which the Lachlan, the Darling, the Murrumbidgee, and the Darling discharge.' 

 (Godwin-Austen's Lecture, Royal Institution of Great Britain, April 16, 1858.) 



Such an area had also been indicated in Sir H. De la Beche's note to p. 296 of 

 his memoir above mentioned, where he refers to ' the great area extending from 

 the country drained by the Volga, eastward through eighty degrees of longitude 

 into China, and from which the waters find no course outwards to the main ocean 

 or to the seas connected with it.' With a gradual depression — with the detritus 

 swept in by the rivers — and with a suitable flora and climate, there might here be 

 both extensive accumulations of vegetable matter grown in place, as well as 

 limited deposits of drifted plants, under different conditions. De la Beche, more- 

 over, referred (p. 146) to the long flat coast of the eastern seaboard of South 

 America, with its great rivers and abundant flora, as being analogous to some 

 parts, at least, of the areas on which the coal-seams w(U'e formed. 



The area of coal-growth in this North-west European region is represented on 

 Mr. II. A. C. Godwin-Austen's map ^ as a littoral belt (varying in width as now 

 exposed at the surface), reaching, in an approximately semicircular or bay like 

 shape, from the Elbe near Magdeburg, and north of the Ilartz, westward to the 

 valley of the Ruhr, including a southern extension to Marburg; and, taken up 

 again, it passes from the Ruhr to Aix-la-Chapelle, and to Namur and Charleroi ; 

 then by the Franco-Belgian coal-field to Calais, and beneath the valley of the 

 Thames to Bristol, Forest of Dean, and South Wales, south of the Old Red area, 

 towards Ireland. On the eastern side of Hereford, and along the east border of 

 the old rocks of Wales, the range of the coal-growth is shown by the coals 

 appearing here and there along the Severn and the Dee ; and doubtless it widened 

 out considerably eastward across what is now England. Continuing northward it 

 occupied Northumbria, and stretched westward locally between the old Cumbrian 

 land and the South Highlands ; passing around the east end of the latter, it was 

 strong across what is now Central Scotland, with indications in North Ireland. 

 Thus the coal-growth invested the southern and western edges of Godwin-Austen's 

 * internal sea ' above mentioned, and extended -westward by two outlets : one at 

 its south-west corner, by South Wales ; and the other on the north-west, by 

 Central Scotland, each into the Irish area, and thus roughly surrounding the 

 several older Palfeozoic lands of Wales, Ireland, Cumbria, and South Scotland. 



In Professor Ramsay's account of the denuded remnants of the Welsh coal- 

 fields - the stretch of coal-growth along the border of the old Cambrian land is 

 clearly indicated in his statement, that — 



' One denuded edge of these accumulations now forms part of the counties of 

 Pembroke, Caermarthen, Glamorgan, and Monmouth, and is elsewhere exhibited 

 in the Forest of Dean, the narrow strips of Coal-measures north of May Hill in 

 Gloucestershire, the Clee Hills (outliers of the Forest of Wyre and Coalbrookdale), 

 the coal-fields south and west of Shrewsbury, and that of Oswestry, Wrexham, 

 and Mold. All these are but fragments of one great original coal-field, once 

 mantling round North Wales and the older rocks west of the Severn and north of 

 Bristol Channel.' 



Both north and south, however, of the old Cumbrian area are a few seemuigly 

 isolated patches of coal ; but the Whitehav^en field is really tlie western portion 

 of the North-of-England coal-growth ; the coal of Anglesea belongs to the west- 

 ward extension of the Lancashire field ; and that of Ingleton is a remnant of the 

 northern part of tbe latter towards the margin of the old Cumbrian land. 



» PI. I., Q.J.G.S., vol. xii., 1856. = Mevi. Gcol. Surv., vol. i., 1846, p. 314. 



