468 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
DEEP SINKING FOR COAL IN THE WYRE FOREST 
COAL-FIELD. 
Additional Notes, by George E. Roberts. 
Some other memoranda which I find among my papers relating to 
this work (for a section of which, with particulars of shaft-sinking, see 
" Geologist" of last month) may not be unacceptable to your coal- 
mining readers. 
The spot where the shaft was sunk was 476 feet above the level of 
the Severn Yalley Railway at Eymoor, and about 510 feet above the 
ordinary height of the River Severn, from which it was distant about 
two miles. The coal seam met with and worked at the depth of 176 
yards, has in other parts of the coal-field a thickness of four feet. The 
colliers regard it as a Flying Reed (red 1) coal. Two of the thin coal- 
seams afterwards sunk through were entirely made up of the remains 
of Sigillarias ; the coal, in consequence, was "long grained" and slaty. 
These Sigillarian coals have a considerable range through the Wyre 
Forest field, and in common with most of the other seams, crop out 
along the western border. At the Baginswood pits, in the north-west 
corner of the coal- field, the upper coal, two feet four inches in thickness, 
worked by hand-draw, being only ten yards from surface, is a most 
interesting seam, made up entirely of compressed Sigillarise. 
I have lately paid these pits a visit, and recommend any one who 
is studying the structure of this ubiquitous coal -plant to get a block 
of the Baginswood coal. At the Blakemoor and Gibhouse pits, in 
another part of the Wyre Forest coal-field, a layer of black slaty coal, 
half an inch in thickness, is seen to be wholly made up of the 
compressed spore-cases of Lycopodiacse, probably belonging to Lepido- 
dendron. Concerning these. Dr. Dawson, in his lately published 
supplement to " Acadian Geology," thus speaks, while relating their 
occurrence in the Lower Coal measures of Nova Scotia : — 
" There are also immense quantities of spherical or flattened car- . 
bonaceous bodies, resembling small shot, which I at one time supposed 
to be spawn of fishes, but Dr. Hooker regards them as the spore-cases 
of Lepidodendra." (p. 41.) 
The grey conglomerate (No. 53 of the sinkings) was a hard 
compact rock, made up of variously sized angular fragments of green 
and purple Cambrian Sandstones. This is the bed which lies imme- 
diately above the " thick" or ten-yard coal in South Stafibrdshire ; 
but the place of that much-wished-for seam at Shatterford was taken 
by twenty inches of anomalous " black and pink ground," followed by 
5 feet of coarse fire-clay containing very few plant- remains. The 
fire-clays sank through evidenced many distinct surfaces of estuarine 
jungle ; but if forest-spoils were ever laid upon the argillaceous 
deposits, after floods swept them away ; little remained to be changed 
into coal. 
