74 Notices of Memoirs—Mr. Horace B. Woodward’s Address— 
In reference to mining enterprise, geology has more often done 
good in preventing useless trials for ‘‘ minerals” than in promoting 
explorations, and particularly in the matter of coal-boring, in which 
people seem most inclined to speculate. Black shale is generally 
enough to stimulate hope, and a man at Shottesham, probably from 
the testimony of the rocks in a Boulder-clay pit, told me he knew 
there was coal in the parish. Not a hundred years ago a trial for 
coal was made within five miles of Norwich. In his account of 
Framingham (1820), Dr. Rigby says, “There is a traditionary 
report, also, that even coal has been found here, and some years ago 
I was induced, in conjunction with the late James Crowe, Esq., who 
had some property in the neighbourhood, to dig to a considerable 
depth on a high part of what was then the heath. Near the surface 
was gravel, and below it clay, which continued until water rose and 
stopped our progress.” He mentions the finding of “two isolated 
pieces of pure coal” in the clay ; but these were probably lignite, 
being “of a texture very different” from the Newcastle coal. 
Wher called upon to give some answer concerning the likelihood of 
getting coal in Norfolk, I always reply in the affirmative, with these 
saving clauses, that a shaft be sunk deep enough, say one thousand 
or fifteen hundred feet, and that the speculator be fully prepared 
to find no coal. 
As the question of the extension of Coal-measures beneath 
the Secondary and newer strata in England is one which concerns 
us, I will endeavour to point out the present state of the case. 
Supposing the chalk, which extends from Flamborough Head and 
Hunstanton to Salisbury Plain, were to be found now, as no doubt 
once upon a time it was found, still further west over Somersetshire, 
Gloucestershire, and the Midland Counties, we might then feel some 
difficulty and hesitation in sinking for Coal-measures beneath it, over 
areas where they are now exposed. We might make borings, and 
come across the Cambrian rocks at Charnwood Forest, the Silurian 
rocks near Dudley and at Tortworth, or the Old Red Sandstone on the 
Mendip Hills; and we might altogether miss the Coal-measures of 
Leicestershire, Warwickshire, South Staffordshire, Bristol, and 
Somerset. Much in this way have we been groping about in the 
east and south-east of England, where several borings have been 
made, which have reached these older rocks. Thus as you well 
know, in the deep well at Harwich, a dark bluish-grey slaty rock of 
Carboniferous age was met with at a depth of 1,029 feet beneath the 
Eocene beds and Chalk. At Kentish Town, beds belonging most 
probably to the Old Red Sandstone were reached at a depth of 1,114 
feet; at Meux’s Brewery in the Tottenham Court Road, London, 
Devonian rocks were met with at a depth of 1,064 feet; and at 
Crossness, near Blackwall, in Kent, strata classed as Old Red Sand- 
stone, or Devonian, were touched at a depth of 1,004 feet. Further, in 
May of this year [1879], Mr. Etheridge announced the interesting fact 
that Silurian rocks (Wenlock shale) had been met with in a boring 
at Ware, in Hertfordshire, at a depth of only 800 feet below the 
surface. Moreover, a study of the rocks in Belgium and the north 
