EMBLETON: NOTES ON ANCIENT rOAL MININO. 
26o 
the palace, and burnt at the King's coronation, but the payment for 
which had been neglected. However, owing to the scarcity and 
deamess of wood, coal was as it were forced into use in spite of 
proclamations, and prejudice gave way as the value of fossil 
coal became more known, and from that time its use became more 
extended. In the reign of Queen Elizabeth the coal trade flourished 
greatly and was regarded as an important source not only of local 
but national revenue by succeeding monarchs. In the reign of 
Charles I. coal was used all over the kingdom. 
THE CAYTON GILL BEDS. BY REV. J. STANLEY TUTE, B.A. 
Immediately underlying the Plumpton grit, there occurs a bed 
of highly fossiliferous rocks, traceable from the western boundary of 
the Permian beds to the flanks of Great "Whernside ; and from the 
banks of the Laver near Ripon, to Follifoot, South of Harrogate. 
In the maps of the Geological Survey it is caUed the shell-bed, but 
unfortunately it has no special colour whereby it might be traced. In 
his memoir of the Harrogate district, Mr. C. Fox-Strangways, adopted 
the term Cayton Gill Beds, which had been suggested to him, in 
consequence of an excellent section occurring in the little valley 
called Cayton Gill, about three miles North- West of Ripley. Here 
the beds dip 20'' south under the Plumpton rocks, and rest conform- 
ably upon a bed of- very dark shale, slightly fossiliferous, on the east 
side of the hiU, but haK-a-mile to the west, on the other side of the 
hill, abounding in Poseidonomya becheri, a small orthoceras, some 
fishes' teeth and scales, and vegetable remains. 
The upper parts of the Ca}i;on GiU beds are much softer and 
arenaceous than the lower, which are very hard, and in many places 
are quarried lor road material, as at Hampsthwaite, FoUifoot, Darley, 
and near Fountains. 
The occurrence of these fossiliferous beds in the middle of the 
millstone grit series, commonly so wanting in organic remains, seems 
to me to possess a certain value as a horizon in the midst of a dis- 
