HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



25 



THE POSSIBLE COAL-FIELDS OF EAST ANGLIA. 



RECENT lecture 

 by Dr. Taylor, 

 the editor of 

 Science-Gossip, 

 is reported as 

 follows, in the 

 "East Anglian 

 Daily Times." 

 The lecture was 

 delivered at the 

 Athenaeum, Bury 

 St. Edmunds. 

 ]^jg| j^ The Right Hon. 

 Earl Cadogan, 

 K.G., occupied 

 the chair, and 

 there was a large 

 attendance. 



The noble 

 Chairman in in- 

 troducing Dr. 

 Taylor, said the subject which that gentleman had 

 chosen for his lecture was of the greatest possible 

 interest to all who dwell in the Eastern Counties. 



Dr. Taylor opened his lecture by referring to the 

 numerous mistakes made by people who knew 

 nothing of the matter, concerning the probable 

 occurrence of coal in East Anglia. He had seen in 

 the newspapers letters stating that coal had been 

 discovered in various well-borings throughout the 

 county, but this simply meant that an occasional pebble 

 of coal had been found in the drift beds among 

 thousands of other pebbles which had been brought 

 down and strown about by glacial agencies. It was 

 easy to understand that from places in the Midland 

 and Northern counties, where the coal cropped out, 

 fragments were brought down to this district by the 

 moving sheet of ice which at one time covered the 

 Eastern counties. But these incidental findings of 

 coal had nothing to do with the great argument he 

 had to lay before them that evening, and he asked 

 No. 326. — February 1892. 



them, in the first place, to disabuse their minds of 

 any such idea.* 



What he wanted to ask them was, to imagine — 

 and science had to appeal largely to the imagination 

 — what the appearance of the Eastern counties would 

 be if they could strip off, like the clothes from a bed, 

 all the overlying strata, including the chalk* He did 

 not hesitate to say that, if they did so, they would 

 find a continuation of the same primary rocks 

 extending underneath London and into the South- 

 Eastern counties as those which occupied the surface 

 in North Wales, Lancashire, Cheshire, and York- 

 shire, only perhaps in a more or less parallel series of 

 folds, running nearly west and east. On the ridges 

 of these the lower Primary rocks would be found, and 

 in the hollows of the folds, perhaps, coal-basins. It 

 was with this fact that his lecture would have to deal. 

 It could not be a so-called popular lecture, therefore, 

 but must of necessity be more or less scientific, and 

 the issues involved in it were so important to the 

 Eastern counties that he did not hesitate to place 

 these scientific arguments before them in as clear and 

 lucid a manner as he was capable of. [It may be said 

 here that the lecturer was largely assisted by specially- 

 made diagrams, covering the walls, as well as black- 

 board sketches, which enabled his hearers the more 

 clearly to follow his closely-reasoned line of 

 argument.] 



The first point to be established was that between 

 the Somersetshire coal-field and possibly the South 

 Welsh coal-fields in the west, and the coal-fields of 

 Northern France and Belgium to the east, there was 

 an underground continuation. The rocks were tied 

 on, so to speak, from one end to the other, only they 

 were like a chain which had been bellied down in 

 the middle during the secondary period of geology, 

 covered by the sea to a great depth, and strown over 



* [Since the above lecture was delivered I had recently- 

 found specimens of "coal" sent me from well-borings passedi 

 through the boulder clay. They were not coal at all, but 

 fragments of black Kimmeridge shale. — Ed. S.-G.l. 



C 



