502 Jukes-— South Staffordshire Coal-field. 
‘The Coalfield is an island of Paleozoic rocks surrounded by the 
Triassic beds. 
‘The line of the Paleozoic rocks may be sketched as follows :— 
An anticlinal ridge, complicated by three local irregular dome- 
shaped elevations, runs from Dudley for four miles to the NNW. 
The three dome-shaped elevations, the most northern of which has 
an elevated synclinal trough attached to it on the west, bring up to 
the present surface the Silurian floor on which the Coal-measures 
rest, and this floor rises again to the surface on the east about Wal- 
sall, but at a much more gentle angle than on the anticlinal ridge. 
Between these two Silurian exposures the Coal-measures lie in a 
shallow basin tilted up a little to the north, so that the beds below 
the Thick Coal crop to the surface between Wolverhampton and 
Walsall. They are, however, soon thrown in again by the great 
Bentley fault, which is a down-throw to the north of 120 yards, and 
north of which dislocation they have no longer a basin-shaped form, 
but dip gently but steadily to the west, so that the higher beds 
(representing the Thick coal) come in about Wyrley, and the lower 
beds crop out about the Brown Hills. North of that the Coal- 
measures seem to retain pretty much the same lie up to Brereton. 
‘South of Bilston the beds dip gently to the south, and are also 
thrown down to the south by a succession of faults which range east 
and west across the basin till we come as far south as Tipton. On 
the east they crop gently towards the Walsall Silurian district, but 
are sharply bent up into a nearly vertical position on the flanks of 
the dome-shaped Silurian elevations as they crop to the anticlinal on 
the west. 
‘Round the southern and south-western margin of this anticlinal 
the Coal-measures lie at a more gentle angle, dipping everywhere 
towards the south and south-west, in which direction they are also 
thrown down by a long fault, called ‘the Russell’s Hall fault,’ which 
runs from north-west to south-east, parallel to the direction of the 
anticlinal ridge, but extending much farther to the south-east. 
‘At right angles to this direction, from the southern termination 
of the anticlinal ridge, in the town of Dudley, a pair of faults form- 
ing the Dudley Port trough run to the north-east for about three 
miles ; and it is remarkable that the faults on the south-east side of 
that trough run mostly north-east and south-west, and are down- 
throws to the north-west, while to the northward of the Dudley 
Port trough the faults run chiefly east and west, and are down- 
throws to the south. 
‘The high ground to the south-east of Dudley, capped by the Row- 
ley basalt, continues in the same line as the high ground of the anti- 
clinal on the north-west of Dudley. ‘The tilting and disturbance of 
the beds, however, is not apparent south-east of Dudley, except by 
the continuation of the Russell’s Hall fault, since the Coal-measures 
seem to be nearly horizontal under the Basalt, and in all the district 
to the south of Oldbury, as far as the Birmingham and Hales Owen ~ 
road at all events, and as far as is known to the south of that up to 
the Permian boundary. f 
