490 TRANSACTIONS LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



among a few practical and commercial men, prevented 

 waste inside the coalfields themselves, but it has 

 stimulated mining and commercial enterprise outside 

 them. It has already led to the successful working out 

 of profitable coal seams far ou'tside the visible limits of 

 our actual coalfields, away under the red rocks and other 

 barren formations, where none but a geologist would ever 

 have dreamt of sinking for profitable minerals. And 

 more, it has demonstrated the probability — and in some 

 cases almost the certainty — that most of our present 

 visible coalfields are connected together underground by 

 a continuous chain of hidden coal seams, which are 

 all destined sooner or later to be worked with profit." 



Leaving altogether out of account the recent discovery 

 of coal in Kent and elsewhere, a discovery prompted solely 

 by the geologist and by geological inferences, we find that 

 all our existing coalfields are extending their borders deep 

 under the red rocks which surround them to even greater 

 and greater depths and over broader and broader stretches 

 of country. There can be no question that on the enlarge- 

 ment of our present coalfields, through the combined 

 discoveries of geologists and the advancement of mining 

 engineering, the future prosperity of England mainly 

 depends. When all our coalfields have been discovered 

 and worked out, it has been well said " the main-spring 

 of our commercial enterprise will be gone." How 

 important, therefore, it is for the well-being of our people 

 that the study and practice of geology shall be encouraged 

 and fostered by the men of enterprise and commerce who 

 deal with the mineral resources of the land. 



Of course the value of a knowledge of geology, 

 geological mapping, and the like, to those who work in the 

 search of metalliferous ores of copper, tin and the like, 

 has been acknowledged from the first. Indeed, it was the 



