THE PHYSIOGRAPHY OF THE 

 COAL SWAMPS. 



ADDEESS TO SECTIOX G (gEOLOGY) BY 



Professor PERCY FRY KENDALL, M.Sc, F.G.S. 



PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 



This enterprising and progressive city in which we are assembled is 

 one of the three ports of shipment for the products of our most 

 important coalfield and for the entry of many of the commodities which 

 we receive in exchange. It seems not unfitting, therefore, that I should 

 address you upon geological problems relating to Coal, more especially 

 as the development of the portion of the Coalfield concealed under 

 newer rocks is approaching nearer and nearer to Hull. 



The subject of Coal Measures Geology has been discussed piece- 

 meal in innumerable papers and memoirs, so that an inquirer may 

 well be appalled at the mass of facts and of often conflicting deductions 

 with which he is confronted. Indeed, it is surprising to discover how 

 fundamental are some differences of opinion which exist. 



A cause that has largely contributed to this confusion has been 

 that the geological specialist has commonly worked too exclusively on 

 the outside of the earth, and the miner, who has viewed things below, 

 has seldom attempted any broad generalisations, his experience being 

 limited usually to a small number of collieries or of coal-seams. 



In my treatment of the subject I shall be frankly and freely specula- 

 tive, for I hold that the Geology of Coal has now reached a stage when 

 the mass of accumulated data calls for an attempt at a general review 

 and synthesis. A Scottish Divine, addressing members of the British 

 Association at Edinburgh last year, said : 'An ounce of theory is worth 

 a ton of fact.' With some qualifying adjectives this embodies a pro- 

 found truth. A carefully considered and weighed theory is worth a 

 great mass of uncoordinated facts, and when I survey the vast un- 

 digested, though not indigestible, mass of facts in the body of coaly 

 literature — without taking into account the 250 million tons of solid 

 black facts raised by the British collieries in an average year — I am 

 emboldened to cast into the opposite scale an ounce or so of theory 

 compounded from the ideas of my illustrious fellow -workers and perhaps 

 an odd grain or two of my own. 



Growth in Place, or Drift. 



Among the questions in the answer to which doctors have differed 

 there is, I imagine, none more fundamental than this : 



Were coal-seams simple aggregations of plant reiiuiins swept together 

 by the action of watei- — a process of accumulntion which (lie learned 



F 2 



