Prof. T. Eitpert Jones — Address, 521 



been necessarily the soil of a coal-seam. He acknowledges the subject to 

 be one of difficulty ; and it seems to me that some at least, if not all, of 

 the difficulties have been already removed by De la Beche, Lesley, Lyell, 

 Dawson, and other observers. 



4. Area of the Goal-growth. — For knowledge of what ruled the local 

 occurrence of coal, we owe a great debt to Mr. R. A. C. Godwin-Austen, 

 who had studied the geology of the South-western Counties with 

 De la Beche. To him we are indebted for the approximate demarcation 

 of the bounds and margins of the Carboniferous Formations, particularly 

 for the probable land-limits and outward extension of the Coal-measures. 

 In his valuable memoir " On the possible Extension of the Coal-measures," ^ 

 he explained the reasons for his indicating on the map then communicated 

 to the Geological Society the physical configuration of North-western 

 Europe at the close of the Palaeozoic period, and the outline of the svirfaces 

 which supported the coal-vegetation. He concluded to define the place 

 and range of this old coal-growth of what is now Western Europe as — 



" An internal sea, around a,nd 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 level or hollow region is as follows:^ 



" The large level tracts which lie west of the Blue Mountains in Australia, 

 into which the Lachlan, the Darling, and the Murrumbidgee, discharge." 

 (Godwin-Austen's Lecture, Eoyal 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 accumulations of 

 vegetable matter grown in place, as well as limited deposits of drifted 

 plants, under different conditions. De la Beche moreover, 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 were formed. 



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

 sented on Mr. R. 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 Hartz, westward to the valley of the Ruhr, including a 

 southern extension to Marburg : and, taken up again, it passes from 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 



^ Quart, Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xii. 18.56, pp. 38-73; also Report Coal Commission, 

 1871, pp. 424 and 511, with plates; and Kep. Brit. Assoc, for 1879, p. 227, pi. xiv. 

 2 Pl.i. Q.J.G.S., yol. xU. 1856. 



