IMPORTANCE OF THESE COAL-FIELDS. 
119 
what is there, we ask, to prevent its extension beneath the ehalk ? From our 
experience in coal-fields (that of Dudley is a beautiful example), we know that 
thick beds of coal never disappear per saltum, and that when followed and re- 
gained beneath contiguous strata of more recent age, the coal is often in unbroken 
sheets, and is then of higher commercial value than where it has been thrown up 
to the surface by former convulsions of nature. Without such convulsions, man, 
it is true, might have long remained ignorant of its existence, but with increased 
knowledge he follows the coal from its disturbed outcrop, and is amply repaid by 
finding it at lower depths and often in great and uniform masses. Attention to 
this simple rule cannot be too strongly impressed upon the minds of the Russian 
authorities. 
If, however, the working of these coal-mines beneath the cretaceous rocks is a 
problem not likely to be solved in our day, we may, at all events, suggest the safe 
experiment of boring through the masses to the west of Lissitchia-Balka, near 
the spot where the lowest beds of certain overlying deposits have been described. 
If correct in our belief, that such overlying strata are of the age of the mag- 
nesian limestone, there is every reason to conclude, from what we know of the 
general structure of Russia, that the carboniferous deposits beneath them will 
partake of the same slight inclination ; and we need not add, that if coal seams, 
as productive as these of Lissitchia-Balka, were found under such favourable cir- 
cumstances and so near to the town of Bachmuth, the discovery would be most 
important. The great impediment to the steady working of these coal-fields is 
their highly dislocated and contorted condition, and we therefore repeat, that the 
object of the Administration of Mines should be pointedly directed to the establish- 
ment of works wherever the beds are least disturbed. 
The process of coal-mining has, in fact, been the same in the more advanced 
tracts of Western Europe. In the olden times of England no one thought ot 
sinking for coal, except at spots where the mineral cropped out ; and we can all 
remember when those geologists who recommended a search after it by pene- 
trating the magnesian limestone (Zechstein) were treated with derision, and yet 
nearly half the fuel of London is now extracted from strata in that position The 
day may therefore come when the old works of Lissitchia-Balka having been ex- 
hausted, the coal-mines of Bachmuth shall render that town most flourishing. 
But whether mining operations be confined, as at present, to the country where 
the carboniferous strata crop out, or hereafter extended by deeper shafts to other 
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