58 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
by feature mapping of the harder bands, the position of others can be 
interpolated, can a coalfield map be made from surface evidence. Under 
such conditions, in country which is marred and scarred by man, it is no 
wonder that the local amateur is content to collect fossils from spoil-banks 
or from brick-pits, and accepts from the professional what he is told about 
the stratigraphy and structure. 
Fortunately the officers of the Geological Survey now have full access 
to mining information, and, as they compile the evidence they are recording 
it upon the revised edition of the official 6-in. geological maps. As the 
map sheets are issued their economic usefulness is recognised by the 
mining profession, but, because of their fullness of detail and because 
established prejudice regards all coalfield information as uninteresting 
and dull, the subject matter has not received from other geologists the 
attention it deserves. 
As one whose business it is to teach geology at a university closely 
associated with industry in the East Pennine Coalfield, I find the call for 
local application of our science more often concerned with underground 
geometry than with the composition of the rocks. Therefore, in training 
men to lead in mineral exploitation, I have insisted that structural geology 
is a science of measurement, and that the real geology of an area is not 
fully known until it can be represented by a model true to scale. 
From accumulated mining information, or from the modern geological 
6-in. maps, it is not difficult to exemplify the shape and size of individual 
structures, but in presenting a completed picture of a coalfield—even of a 
district so far exploited as that of Yorkshire—the gaps in present know- 
ledge are so wide that, lacking a working hypothesis to summarise the 
shapes and distribution of the folds and faults, one must exterpolate, and 
continually correct approximations as new information comes along. 
During my years at Sheffield I have enjoyed the sport of correlating 
nearby coalfield structures on dead-reckoning not less than similar pursuits 
among the mountains, and it is in the hope that, from a review of obvious 
trend-lines over a wider area an ordered plan of regional structure may 
emerge, I have chosen the subject for this address. I am confident 
that the study of coalfield structures is an open field for the advancement 
of science, and as mining development proceeds in Coal Measures con- 
cealed beneath the newer rocks, successful projection of the buried 
structures promises no inconsiderable industrial reward. 
Where Coal Measures rest conformably on Millstone Grit, the major 
folds and faults disturbed both formations together, and the unit of struc- 
ture is therefore greater than the coalfield. Recent investigations, in 
establishing Upper Carboniferous zonal correlations, have made it certain 
that a Pennine basin filled with Millstone Grit and Coal Measures 
extended to the Midlands. The limestone massif of the Peak lines up 
with Charnwood Forest, the downfold of Cheshire continues into Shrop- 
shire ; so for a manageable unit of structure it is logical to take the area 
within the nearmost outcrop ring of pre-Carboniferous rock. This is 
the Midland Coalfield Province. It lies all within a circle of sixty miles 
radius round Buxton. Its bounds are set towards the north by the scarp 
