GO 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
The clays or shales are more oddly named — Clunch ; Ground : 
Partings ; Binds ; Clod ; Shale ; Pouncil batt ; Table batt ; Pricking 
and Blacktry. 
Ironstone beds rejoice in the appellations — Penny stone ; Brown- 
stone ; Whitery ; Lambstone ; Blue flats ; Cakes ; Grains ; Gubbins ; 
Ballstone ; Bindstone ; Silver thread ; Diamonds ; Getting rock ; and 
"Poor Robins." 
The bad coals are — Bass ; Smutt ; Black bazil, &c. And every coal 
bed has its name too. There are the — Top four-foot coal; Yard 
coal ; Brook coal : Robin's ; Plying reed ; Deep coal ; Mealy grey 
coal; White coal! Stone coal; Shallow coal; Old-man's coal; 
" Heathen" coal ; Stinking coal ; Bazils ; Slipper coal ; Sawyer coal ; 
and Bottom coal. 
I'm sure that is enough. Moreover, every district has its own 
vocabulary. Only fancy what the Welsh must be ! 
But whatever be the kind of bed over the coal there is one invariable 
rule helow it. A bed of clay, called fire clay" — a fine soft substance 
useful for furnace-pots and furnace-bricks — occurs beneath every 
seam. Sir William Logan, now at the head of the Geological Survey 
in Canada, first found this out in Wales. It is the clue to the history 
of coal ; and we shall have to refer to it again. 
. Please to bear in mind that these layers or beds of coal are re- 
markably regular. It is of the gTeatest consequence in mining that 
they are so. If you find, for instance, that the Old Man's Coal is 
always next to the " Heathen" Coal, and the " white coal" comes next 
(I don't know that they do), you are safe for the whole coal-field. 
You have only to measure the distance between the Old Man and the 
Heathen, and so on, and you know whereabouts to expect them in 
any other part of the field. 
We have reason to beheve too that every bed of coal and ironstone has 
some peculiarity in its fossil contents ; and if this should turn out to 
be true, we shall have a still better means of ascertaining in what 
part of a coal basin our pits may be sunk — a very important point — 
for if our mines should happen to lie upon the lowest beds of the 
whole series, (say at h, in the woodcut, p. 9,) it would be a 
rather unprofitable investment to buy ground there. But if on the 
contrary, we aie likely to be on the "Top coal," why then, work 
away merrily'; we may say, altering Mrs. Hemans' sense, but not 
her words, — 
" Yet more — the depths have more ; — what wealth mitold 
Far down, and shining m then- stOhiess Hes," 
I ^vill not add another line — for geology does not admit of parodies, 
and good sense refuses them. 
Well, now, we've found our coal. The next thing is to get it. 
England requires for home consumption and for export nearly seventy 
million tons per annum ; and if you put all her coal-fields together 
they do but measure nine or ten thousand square miles. Yet 
