Professor W. B)i/d Dawkiiis—The S.E. Coalfield. 501 



Mijomorplia, and ITijsf.ricomorphn of Brandt, we cannot hope to gain 

 ail insight into the inutual affinities of the various groups of the order. 

 These sub-orders are unnatural because (1) they ignore the fossil 

 Eodentia and the lessons taught by them ; (2) in some instances 

 they present an amalgamation of heterogeneous groups ; and (3) they 

 draw barriers where in reality there are none. Winge, by pulling 

 down these artificial barriers, has taken the bull by the horns, and 

 we cannot do better than follow him. 



IV. — On the South-Eastekn Coalfield.^ 

 By Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A., F.R.S. 



I^HE discovery of a coalfield in 1890 at Dover, in a boring at 

 the foot of Shakespeare Cliff, has been already brought before 

 the British Association by the author at Cardiff in. 1892, and is so 

 well known that it is unnecessary to enter into details other than 

 the following. The Carboniferous shales and sandstones contaia 

 twelve seams of coal, amounting to a total thickness of 28 feet 



5 inches. These occur at a depth of 1,100 feet 6 inches below 

 Ordnance datum, and have been penetrated to a depth of 1,064 feet 



6 inches, or 2,177 feet 6 inches from the surface. They are identical, 

 as I have shown elsewhere,^ with the rich and valuable coalfields 

 of Somersetshire on the west, and of France and Belgium on the 

 east. The discovery is of great practical value, as it will probably 

 result in the same development in Kent of industries and manufactures 

 which has taken place where the coal has been worked, under the 

 same conditions, beneath the Cretaceous and Jurassic rocks in France 

 and Belgium. It is of equally great theoretical value, as it proves 

 up to the hilt the truth of God win- Austen's view, published in 

 1858, that the Coal-measures lie buried underneath the newer rocks 

 in South-Eastern England. 



After the boring was completed in 1893 the discovery lay dormant 

 until in 1897 the Kent Collieries Corporation began to sink shafts 

 on the site of the boring, and to put down boreholes at Brabourne 

 and Pluckley, in the Weald of Kent, to verify the range of the 

 Coal-measures in the property which they held under lease. 



The Mid-Kent Coal Syndicate also put down a boring at Penshurst, 

 and the Kent Coal Exploration Company began work in various 

 parts of eastern Kent. The borings of the two latter undertakings 

 have been carried on under my supervision, and none of them, as 

 yet, is completed. They, nevertheless, throw important light on 

 the range of the Coal-measures in South-Eastern England, and are 

 not unworthy of being brought before this meeting of the British 

 Association. 



The first boring to be noticed is at Ropersole, a spot near the 

 highway between Dover and Canterbury — eight miles from Dover, 

 at 400 feet above O.D. — the surface being composed of Upper Chalk, 



1 A paper read before Section C (Geology), British Association, Dover Meeting, 

 September, 1899. 



- Proc. Royal Inst., June 6, 1890. Traas. Manchester Geol. Sec, sxii, Feb. 2, 

 1894 ; XXV, Feb. 9, 1897. 



