Xciv PEOCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [JuDC I912, 



acquired has been published, and a great deal more has found its 

 way to the Offices of the Geological Survey. This body, realizing 

 the great economic importance of such data, has taken infinite 

 trouble to record, store, index, and interpret the evidence yielded 

 by boring, and has thus provided a storehouse of extremely valuable 

 information. Whenever it is possible or advisable, such portion of 

 this as is open for the purpose has been published in Memoirs 

 dealing with coalfields or water-supply areas, or in the ordinary 

 map-sheet Memoirs. 



This plan is, in itself, admirable as making the best of a difficult 

 and complicated array of circumstances ; but the best codification 

 and publication of results obtained, as it were by accident, from a 

 series of scattered borings executed without a comprehensive plan, 

 is a poor substitute for a systematic boring survey rationally 

 planned with the view of obtaining a definite result. The matter 

 is ripe for deliberate research instead of haphazard discovery. 



(A) Epigean Surveys in the Past and Present. 



Let us consider what would have happened if, when coal-mining 

 first began, geological science had advanced sufficiently to allow 

 of the making of accurate maps of the coalfields on a large 

 scale, and if the geological structure of the coalfields had been 

 completely worked out. It is evident that much of the money 

 thrown away in fruitless exploration would have been saved, that 

 very many of the sources of waste would have been avoided, that 

 difficulties of drainage and those associated with mine-planning 

 would have been materially lessened, and that it might have been 

 possible to deal with tectonic units instead of miscellaneous areas 

 depending upon surface conditions which have little or no relation 

 to underground structure. Even now that the exposed coalfields 

 have been so extensively worked, coalowners, colliery proprietors, 

 and others interested in coal are again and again demanding exact 

 new surveys to provide them with large-scale maps and sections 

 embodying the whole of present-day information. It is certainly 

 true that a great deal of our present knowledge of structure is the 

 outcome of the development of mining itself, and that in many cases 

 it has been gained by those actually engaged in mining operations. 

 Eor this Geologists are, and should be, ever grateful. But it must 

 be remembered that Geologists were, at the outset of coal-mining 

 operations, and are still, up to the present day, limited in their 

 observations to the surface, and to those exposures made by natural 

 and artificial sections cut into the earth's crust. In very few cases 



