Mr. George Tate's Miscellanea Geologica. ^ST 



ate their value. There is, however, a difference in the dis- 

 tance of these seams from each other ; at Eglingham, the 

 Craw Coal is only 8 fathoms, but in the north it is as much 

 as 18 fathoms above the Main Coal. The lower and more 

 valuable seams have not been worked in this district ; there 

 yet remain untouched the Three-Quarter Seam, the valuable 

 Cooper Eye Seam, and the Wester Coal. 



The Craw Coal and Main Coal are neither so thick nor so 

 good in quality at Eglingham, as they are in the neighbour- 

 hood of Berwick; but they have been worked here, on a 

 small scale, where the strata are disturbed, and not far from 

 their outcrop. Further towards the dip, and at greater depths, 

 they will probably be in a better state. There seems, there- 

 fore, to be a considerable quantity of coal stored up in the 

 moor lands of Northumberland, for the future wants of the 

 country ; and, doubtless, the time will come, after the richer 

 and more accessible seams of the coal measures have been 

 exhausted, when these barren moor lands will present a busy 

 population, actively engaged, with the aid of improved 

 mechanical appliances, in the extraction of coal, to enable 

 Britain to keep up her pre-eminence as a manufacturing 

 country. 



A more recent deposit deserves a notice. Among the hills, 

 in the valley down which Eglingham Burn flows, and at an 

 elevation of about 400 feet above the sea level, there is a 

 deposit of sand and gravel, about 30 feet in thickness, extend- 

 ing over a considerable area. The surface, with here and 

 there rounded knolls, shews the moulding action of water ; 

 and the gravels, chiefly porphyry from the Cheviots, are 

 rounded and smooth. Evidence is thus given, that at a 

 comparatively recent period the district around had been 

 covered with water at least 400 feet above the present level. 

 But subsequent to that time, there had been a small lake 

 among those hills some 20 feet in depth, for the margin is 

 traceable in the steep face of the gravel and sand deposit on 

 its north-west side. 



Earlston. 



In the Black Hill, near Earlston, and in several other parts 

 of Berwickshire and Roxburghshire, there is a red sandstone 

 reaching an elevation of from 600 to nearly 900 feet above 

 the sea level; and yet having a stratification nearly horizontal. 

 So long as organisms Avere undiscovered, it was regarded as 

 belonging to the new red sandstone era. To determine its 

 age was one of the objects of the Earlston meeting. 



