508 



COAL-FIELDS BENEATH THE NEW RED SANDSTONE. 



find good coal seams beneath the New Red Sandstone, must, to a certain extent, be 

 speculative, though there may be little doubt of the extension of carboniferous strata. 

 The Dudley, the Titterstone Clee and the Coal Brook Dale fields are examples of pro- 

 ductive ; the Brown Clee, Kinlet, Shatterford and Abberley of unproductive measures. 



Reverting, however, to the more cheering prospect of the two, and believing that 

 beneath the tracts of New Red Sandstone surrounding the coal-fields, there may exist a 

 due proportion of thick and valuable, as well as of thin and profitless coal seams, let me 

 advise the proprietors of such tracts, before they embark in mining, to ascertain the 

 exact geological position of the red land on which they live. If it should belong to 

 the upper or even to the middle portion of the New Red Sandstone, they would do 

 well to desist. If, on the contrary, it should belong to the Lower New Red ; and above 

 all, if the spot be not very distant from the edge or boundary of a good coal-field, then 

 let the trial be fearlessly made. But the speculator must bear in mind, that coal, like 

 every other mineral substance, is distributed in layers of variable thickness, and may 

 therefore rapidly attenuate as well as suddenly expand within a very limited area. A 

 remarkable example of this phenomenon has been exposed by the works at West 

 Bromwich. This enterprise has, indeed, completely confirmed the geologist's view, by 

 showing the existence of a carbonaceous formation beneath the New Red Sandstone ; 

 but, we must fairly acknowledge, that as an experiment to prove the existence of a good 

 commercial coal-field, extending towards the town of Birmingham, it has for the present 

 failed. In the meantime, the shafts of Lord Dartmouth, being nearly one mile distant 

 from what was anciently supposed to be the edge of the coal-field, where the 10 yard 

 coal is cut off by a fault, there is every rational ground for believing that the work, 

 when followed to the west or towards the known coal-field, will amply repay the outlay 

 of this spirited enterprise. (See PI. 37. f. 1.) 



In conclusion, it may be observed, that as no thick stratum ever had an abrupt ter- 

 mination (like that exhibited on the sides of the boundary faults), so it is demonstrable, 

 that whenever the coal is thus " lost," in contact with rocks of younger age than itself, 

 it is lost only for a short distance, and is always to be regained at a lower level by pe- 

 netrating the younger deposit. 



The application of this principle to certain tracts on the northern and eastern sides 

 of the coal-fields of Coal Brook Dale, and generally around the Staffordshire and Wor- 

 cestershire coal-fields, must be obvious to all, who have perused the preceding pages. 



I press the consideration of the extension of coal measures beneath the New Red 

 Sandstone of the central counties, because, though absolutely essential to a correct cal- 

 culation of the probable duration of British coal, it has been entirely omitted in our na- 

 tional estimates 1 . Hence political economists maybe led to appreciate the value of 

 geological inquiry. 



1 See Report on the state of the Coal trade, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 13 July, 1830, 



