506 Prof. T. It. Jones and W. K. Parker — On Foraminifera. 



The question, however, has lately been again agitated, and a pro- 

 posal has been made to form a new company to recommence opera- 

 tions from the bottom of the old shaft. In view of this circumstance, 

 it may not be without interest or utility to consider what thickness 

 of beds possibly intervene between the bottom of the shaft and the 

 horizon of workable Coal. The Coal-field of Warwickshire is the 

 nearest Coal-field to this locality, and as no important change from the 

 thining-out or denudation of intermediate beds, or from a great fault, 

 is known to occur in the space lying between this locality and that, 

 it will not be unreasonable to apply the data furnished by sections 

 in Warwickshire to an approximate calculation of the probable 

 thickness of the same beds in this district. Mr. Hull, in The Goal- 

 fields of Great Britain, quoting from Mr. Howell's Memoir "On 

 the Geology of the Warwickshire Coal-field, etc.," gives the follow- 

 ing thicknesses : — Trias, 780 feet ; Lower Permian, 2,000 feet ; 

 Sandstones, Shales, etc., of the Coal-measures before workable Coal 

 is reached, 1,500 feet. So that, if these beds extend into the adjoin- 

 ing county of Northampton without material alteration, we shall 

 have underlying the bottom of the Kingsthorpe shaft, and above the 

 horizon of the Warwickshire Coal, beds of the aggregate thickness 

 of 4,200 feet ; which, added to the depth of the old shaft, would 

 give a total depth of some 5,000 feet, or about twice the depth of 

 the deepest Coal-mine in this country. 



Moreover, according to the views of Mr. Hull, as stated by him in 

 a paper read in the Geological Section of the British Association at 

 Liverpool last year, Northamptonshire is quite without the area of 

 the original Coal-field of this country, as it existed before denu- 

 dation took place ; and in such case no Coal could possibly be found 

 at any depth. 



The faith of the projectors of the proposed new company, how- 

 ever, is not based upon any geological considerations, but upon the 

 opinions of practical men ; indeed, one prominent mover in the 

 matter, a man of means, having large connexion with the iron- 

 producing trade in the country, declares his utter lack of faith 

 in geologists, and bases his belief that Coal will be found in 

 Northamptonshire upon his conviction "that where God has sent 

 iron-ore, he has also sent Coal to smelt it ! " 



Dallington Hall, Oct. 20, 1871. 



IV. — On the Foraminifera op the Chalk of Gravksend and 



Meudon, figured by Prof. Dr. Chr. G. Ehrenberg. 



By Prof. T. Eupert Jones, F.G.S., and W. K. Parker, F.R.S. 



THE Second Edition of Prof. Morris's "Catalogue of British 

 Fossils " appeared in 1854, and in the same year was published 

 Dr. Chr. G. Ehrenberg's " Mikrogeologie," containing the figures of 

 numerous Foraminifera found by that eminent German microscopist, 

 in specimens of Chalk from Gravesend, Kent. A preliminary notice, 

 indeed, of these had been given in the Transactions of the Berlin 

 Academy of Sciences for 1838 (1839), pp. 92, 133—135, 146, pi. iv., 



