APPENDIX. 



729 



be most fortunate, and that the plateau extending westwards from Christchurch will be found to contain below 

 it one of the least disturbed and, consequently, most valuable parts of the South Stafford Coal-field.— (Nov. 8, 

 1838.) 



I may further add, that in making a tunnel under the Wyrley and Essington Canal, on the line of the Birr 

 mingham and Liverpool Railroad, north of Wolverhampton, after cutting away the gravel and red clay, 

 (probably a part of the Lower New Red,) the workmen came upon coal, smut, &c, cropping out towards the 

 Wolverhampton basin. This fact, communicated to me by Mr. John Barker of Wolverhampton, tends to 

 confirm my belief that the Staffordshire and Shropshire coal-fields are simply upcast portions of the same 

 carbonaceous tract, and that coal may hereafter be worked in the intervening space, though probably at a 

 considerable depth beneath the Red Sandstone. 



I have previously explained to my readers, that to attempt such trials with any reasonable prospect of success, 

 they should feel certain that the Red Sandstone which they may endeavour to penetrate, is really the Lower 

 New Red ; and further, that their first operations are not commenced at too great a distance from the boundary 

 fault of a good coal-field. To search for coal far to the east, for example, of the Staffordshire coal-field, par- 

 ticularly in those parts where older rocks are thrown up through the cover of New Red Sandstone without 

 the trace of coal, would be very absurd : similar endeavours, on the contrary, to penetrate the Lower New 

 Red Sandstone in the vicinity of tracts, such as the Bredon and adjoining hills of Leicestershire, where the 

 old slaty rocks (Cambrian) are flanked by zones of Carboniferous Limestone and coal, is clearly an operation to 

 be encouraged. On this point, indeed, I may now speak confidently, from the result of a highly successful trial 

 made (unknown to me) since the pages relating to this subject were written ; for Mr. George Stevenson, the 

 celebrated mining-engineer, has actually penetrated the New Red Sandstone adjacent to the Bredon Hills, 

 and is now working a coal-field of much greater value than any which has been naturally thrown up to the 

 surface in that neighbourhood. In this case Mr. Stevenson applied, with his well-known energy, the same 

 means by which he had been accustomed to sink through the Magnesian Limestone and Lower Red Sand- 

 stone of the northern counties. 



The tract alluded to in Leicestershire, and which is thus proved to be one of great importance in supplying 

 the inland districts with coal, was last year re-examined by Professor Sedgwick, who had previously explained 

 the prominent relations of its older rocks, and he informs me that he found the Red Sandstone which there 

 overlies the coal-measures to be in every respect analogous to the formation I have described in Shropshire, 

 Staffordshire, and Worcestershire, i. e. containing much calcareous sandstone and grit, with traces of plants 

 and coal in its lower members ; while the upper coal-measures present a thin band of apparently " fresh- 

 water limestone," similar to that which I have pointed out in the same position in the Shrewsbury, Coal 

 Brook Dale, and other coal-fields. (See pp. 83. et seq.) 



D. (2.) 



Outcrops of the Dudley Coal. 



The lowering of the roads during the last summer near Dudley has exposed the outcrop of the bottom beds 

 of the coal measures. About half a mile from the town, on the road to Birmingham, such an outcrop had 

 been long visible, and is indeed noticed by Mr. Kier in his account of this tract ; but by cutting through 

 the rising ground in question, the coal-beds have been completely exposed, and are seen to rest at their western 

 extremity upon the shale of the Wenlock (Dudley) Limestone, the beds of which, rising gently from beneath the 

 town and the Castle Hill, are suddenly arched, and plunge to the E.N.E. at an angle of 30°, surmounted conform- 

 ably by coal measures. So conformable, indeed, are these Silurian and carboniferous rocks, and so much do they 

 appear to graduate into each other, that it is obvious the one must have been deposited upon the other in the 



