Natural History in Colonisation. 127 
commonest illustrations of the loss of money by geological ignorance. 
But not only are such cases frequent at home ; they would appear 
to be equally so much nearer your own shores; so notoriously so 
indeed as to have found the following record in the pages of a popular 
topographical handbook (Fairfax’s “‘ Handbook to Australasia,” 
1857, p. 14, Victoria) :—“ Considerable sums, which might have 
been saved by a very small amount of geological knowledge and in- 
vestigation, have been injudiciously and fruitlessly expended, both 
in the Cape Patterson, Cape Otway, and Barrabool Hills districts, 
in searching for workable seams of coal.” True coal, then—the 
coal we use as fuel in Scotland and England—belongs to the 
“‘ Carboniferous system” of geologists. A limited amount of coal, 
whether properly or improperly so-called I cannot stop here to 
inquire, occurs, inter alia, in the Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, and 
Cretaceous systems, all of which are superior in the geological 
scale to the Carboniferous system. Another substance called 
Brown Coal or Lignite—usually the latter—is peculiar to the 
Tertiary formation, a formation still more recent, still higher in 
290) ‘ the best Manual of Geology in the English language’’—“ The Student’s 
Manual of Geology, by J. Beete Jukes, F.R.S., Director of the Geological 
Survey of Ireland: Edinburgh, 1862.” ‘TI have elsewhere stated my belief,” 
says Mr Jukes, “ that the amount of money /ruitlessly expended in a ridiculous 
search after Coal, even within my own experience, would have paid the entire 
cost of the Government Geological Survey of the United Kingdom. It is a 
curious perversity of the human mind, that men prefer to take the advice of 
those whose interest itis to get them to spend money, rather than the warn- 
ings of those who can have no interest in inducing them not to spendit..... 
Within my own experience large sums of money have been absolutely thrown 
away, which the slightest acquaintance with Paleontology would have saved. I 
have known, even in the rich coal district of South Staffordshire, shafts con- 
tinued down below the coal measures, deep into the Silurian shales, with 
crowds of fossils brought up in every bucket, and the sinker still expecting to 
find coal in beds below these Silurian fossils. J have known deep and expen- 
sive shafts sunk in beds too far above the coal measures for their ever being 
reached ; and similar expensive shafts sunk in black shales and slates in the 
lower rocks far below the coal measures, where a pit might be sunk to the 
centre of the earth without ever meeting with coal. Nor are these fruitless 
enterprises a thing of the past. They are still going on in spite of the silent 
warnings of the fossils in the rocks around, and in spite of the loudly expressed 
warnings of the Geologists, who understand them, but who are supposed still 
to be vain theorists, and not to know so much as the ‘ practical man.’.... All 
‘indications’ are worthless as evidence of the presence of the ‘ Carboniferous 
formation,’ except the occurrence of the ‘ Carboniferous fossils.’ Even where 
the fossils occur, there may be no coal; but all sinking for coal in beds con- 
taining any other than the Carboniferous fossils is pure waste of labour and 
a The geologist... . knows that not only do black and grey shales 
occur where there is no chance of coal being found; but that even thin seams 
of coal occur in formations where no coal worth working has ever been found 
in the British area or in western Europe..... 
_ The importance of the study of fossils . . . . is not limited to the theoretical 
speculations or the philosophical conclusions that may be derived from them; 
for these, like many other scientific conclusions, may be coined into actual money, 
or money's worth, by their practical application.” 
