Dr Lauder Lindsay on Natural History. 125 
The Place and Power of Natural History in Colonisation ; 
with special reference to Otago* (New Zealand). By W. 
LAUDER Linpsay, M.D., F.R.S. Edin., F.L.S. and F.R.G.S. 
London, &c. (Concluded from last Number.) 
Geology of the Otago Lignites. 
Nearly as many queries have been put to me regarding coal as 
regarding gold. What do I think, I am asked, of the Clutha 
coal, the Saddlehill coal, the Tokomairiro coal, and others of the 
so-called coals of Otago? In reply, I regret I cannot regard 
any of your so-called coal, which I have seen, in the same favour- 
able light that Government and the settlers generally appear to 
do. I say so now, and frankly, because I fear great disappoint- 
ment, and, very probably, great losses in speculation may be the 
result of exaggerated or erroneous notions of the value of the 
coals referred to. There are questions connected with the com- 
mercial value of your coals—(or let me call them by what appears 
to me to be their proper name, Lignites—I prefer using the true de- 
signation, for reasons immediately to be explained)—with which, 
at present, I have nothing to do; such are the distances of the 
respective coal fields or workings from Dunedin or other market, 
the difficulty and cost of transport, the scarcity and expensiveness 
of labour, and so forth,—all of which, however, are matters of 
moment to speculators and consumers, But I would enter on 
certain brief explanations as to the geological position and cha-~ 
racters of your lignites. Without going into the strict scientific 
definition of ‘“ what is coal”—a theme of much evreater intricacy 
than you may suppose, and the subject of one of the most in- 
teresting suits that has been tried before the Court of Session in 
Scotland of late years—the celebrated Torbanehill mineral case— 
it is enough for present purposes to say that the substance we 
at home call Coal, belongs to, or is contained in, a particular 
formation or system of rocks called by geologists the Carboniferous, 
or coal-bearing, system. The position and the components 
of this series of strata are well defined; geologists know pre- 
cisely the rocks above and below. The character of the fossils 
especially it is, vegetable or animal, which a rock contains— 
a fern frond, a fish-tooth, a shell,—which enables the geologist 
with certainty to identify strata, and at once to fix the system to 
which they belong—their place in the geological series or chain 
—their comparative chronology. And it is fortunate we possess 
* Extracts from a Lecture prepared for, and at the request of, the ‘“ Young 
Men’s Christian Association” of Dunedin (Otago, New Zealand). Dunedin, 
January 1862, 
