229 
present surface features, consisting of valleys, watersheds, 
and escarpments, mainly originated while the land was 
under the sea — while the valleys formed inlets, the water- 
sheds straits, and the escarpments sea cliffs. 
SOME OBSERVATIONS ON COAL AND COAL MINING, AND THE 
ECONOMICAL WORKING OF OUR COAL FIELDS. BY MR, 
WALTER ROWLEY, MINING ENGINEER, LEEDS. 
At our meeting in Pontefract last November, our honorary 
secretary, Mr. WiUiam Sykes Ward, expressed a wish that 
some members of this Society would contribute papers on the 
most economical mode of working Coal Mines. My only 
apology as an amateur geologist, and so young a member of 
this Society, for complying with Mr. Denny's request to pre- 
pare these observations (and at the same time continuing a 
series of papers so ably inaugurated by our friend Mr. Tew, 
and which I trust will be continued by many present), is an 
earnest conviction that the best way to assist each other in 
the pursuit of knowledge, is by every member contributing, 
out of the storehouse of his own experience, those results 
which circumstances and his daily occupation have given him 
the best opportunity of investigating ; hence the subject of 
my paper, prepared with considerable diffidence, but with a 
hope, that with your assistance, we may exert our utmost to 
stem that tide of " wilful waste " which in the end will make 
" woful want " of a commodity the most valuable that a 
nation can possibly possess as a source of national wealth. 
The writer, on the present occasion, will pass over the 
geological introduction by which this paper might be pre- 
ceded, and thus avoid the charge of having presumed 
to linger on ground where often, mining engineers fear 
to tread, lest they come in collision with our geological 
savansy who, during the last few years, by their valuable 
