THE 



GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE 



NEW SERIES. DECADE VI. VOL. V^conian insf/V? 



„.<^ 

 ]^o. XII.— DECEMBER, 1918. 



."^ DEC2 8l31i 



I. — Coal in Spitsbergen. 

 By W. H. WiLCOCKSON, M.A., F.G.S. 



ALTHOUGH the existence of coal in Spitsbergen has been known 

 for a very long time, it is only of recent years that development 

 has been undertaken on any considerable scale. As early as 1610 

 explorers brouglit back with them small amounts of coal to burn on 

 tlie voyage home, and in 1614 the islands were formally claimed for 

 James I by the Muscovy Company. The coal Avas also described 

 from the scientific point of view by Nathorst and others at various 

 dates, but no attempt was made to work it till about 1904, when the 

 Arctic Coal Company, an American concern, opened a mine at 

 Advent Bay. 



The Spitsbergen Archipelago is made up of a number of islands of 

 a total area about ei^ual to that of Ireland. The greater part of the 

 land is divided between West Spitsbergen, which is by far the 

 largest, and North-East Spitsbergen : the relative position of these 

 two land-masses is implied by their names. In addition to these 

 there are Prince Charles Foreland off the west coast of West 

 Spitsbergen, and Barents Island and Edge Island lying south of 

 North-East Spitsbergen. Structurally, the islands are part of the 

 old North Atlantic continent, and are broken up by subsidences and 

 bounded by fi'actures, which were accompanied by eruptions. 



Along the west coast of West Spitsbergen there is a narrow belt 

 of highly folded and crumpled rocks, which has been affected by 

 several successive mountain-building movements, continuing down 

 to Tertiary times ; further east this folding, faulting and thrusting 

 dies out, and the remainder of the island is made up of a high plateau 

 with regular stratigraphy and gentle dips, deeply trenched by the 

 inlets of Ice Fjord and Bell and Lowe Sounds, which extend far 

 into the interior. In the western zone the older and newer strata 

 are much folded together, and here the oldest rocks found in the 

 island, the Hekla Hook formation, are exposed. These are lime- 

 stones of Ordovician age, followed by Silurian quartzites, dolomites, 

 and sandstones. They are succeeded by Devonian beds, which are 

 the oldest rocks seen in the interior, and are composed of a mass of 

 red strata very like the British Devonian. On these Carboniferous 

 limestones and cherts rest with a strong unconformity, and are in 

 turn followed by a belt of sandstones and shales referred to the 

 Permian. Above these lie the Triassic strata, chiefly shales or clays 



DECADE VI. — VOL. V. — NO. XII. 34 



