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more absurd undertakings are constantly being entered upon. 
I shall cite several other instances. 
Sir Henry de la Beche has informed me, that near Tiverton, 
in Devonshire, many years ago, a shaft was sunk in the shales 
of the millstone grit, an unprofitable set of beds at the base of 
the coal measures. As might have been foretold, nothing was 
found, till one Sunday, when the population were safely housed 
in church, some boys emptied a coal-scuttle into the pit, and on 
the top threw in part of the extracted rubbish. Great was the 
joy on Monday morning when the miners brought up the coal : 
it was declared to be “ as good as Newcastle ” (which indeed it 
was), and all the parish bells were set a-ringing ! 
On Chard Common, near Lyme Ilegis, they bored in the 
lias for coal, at an expense of several thousand pounds. The 
deception was fostered by the accident of passing through — not 
a bed but a piece of lignite. Numerous lias fossils were turned 
out, which of themselves ought at once to have decided the 
question, even without a broader knowledge of the geological 
structure of the country. 
A similar trial took place at Kingsthorp, near Northampton, 
where a shaft was sunk through the lower oolite and lias, at an 
expenditure of near 30,000?. The adventurers desisted when 
they reached the new red sandstone. Many similar instances 
might be multiplied. 
In the coal-field of the Forest of Dean the carboniferous 
limestone shale lies 1,000 feet beneath the lowest bed of coal. 
Nevertheless, in Herefordshire, a person, more confident than 
sagacious, first built his engine-house, and sheds to receive the 
produce, and then boldly sunk a shaft in these beds in search 
of coal, where it could not by possibility exist. In future lec- 
tures I shall show that the coal measures once extended above 
this area, but the conditions never obtained by which one bed 
of coal could have been formed either in the beds explored, or in 
the old red sandstone on which they rest. At the very moment 
I now write I have received a letter from Mr. Aveline, one of 
the geologists of the survey, in which he says : “ I have a narrow 
slip of coal measures running between the Permian, the new red 
beds, and the old red sandstone that you saw at Bewdley. A 
