Aug., 1890. 
THE DOVER COALFIELD. 
171 
which it is likely to contain, the facilities for getting the same, 
as well as its quality, are all matters of the highest import¬ 
ance to the general public ; whilst the geologist is interested 
in finding out. in addition to these things, the relation, if any, 
which this newly discovered coal area bears to other coal 
basins, and the conditions under which it assumed its present 
position. Many years ago Colonel Godwin Austen, and after¬ 
wards Professor Prestwich, had come to the conclusion that 
productive coal measures very possibly existed concealed 
beneath newer strata in our south-eastern counties, which 
would be found to have been connected, before the breaking 
up of the measures into the separate basins in which they 
now lie, with the South Wales and Somerset coalfields to the 
west, and with those on the other side of the English Channel 
of France and Belgium. 
Various things pointed to this conclusion. Amongst 
others, it was observed that there was a very remarkable resem¬ 
blance between the coal basin of Mons in Belgium and that of 
Somersetshire. In both we find a very remarkable disturb¬ 
ance of the measures, great contortion and even inversion of 
the beds having been produced by lateral pressure in both 
areas, whilst there is also the closest resemblance between 
the two coalfields in the mineralogical character of their rocks, 
both those of the coal measures themselves as well as those 
immediately underlying them. 
Again, the line of strike of the Carboniferous rocks of 
Belgium and of French Flanders through the Boulonnais is 
such that when taken in conjunction with the remarkable 
resemblances between these Continental coalfields and those on 
this side of the Channel, we can have little doubt but that 
they once formed part of one great undivided area of coal¬ 
bearing rocks which, by the subsequent earth movements to 
which I have previously referred, has been broken up into 
now isolated patches. 
That great line of upheaval, which has been called the 
Axis of Artois, can be traced, Professor Boyd Dawkins has 
pointed out, from Westphalia to Somersetshire and South 
Wales, and even as far to the west as south-east Ireland ; the 
very remarkable results of the magnetic survey described by 
Professor Rudler show the presence of an underground eleva¬ 
tion of old rocks in this district. This elevated ridge may be 
supposed to exist towards the east, buried beneath the Meso¬ 
zoic and Tertiary rocks of the counties intervening between 
the western coalfields and the Channel. It is marked in 
these counties on the surface by the anticlinal of chalk which 
runs through Wiltshire, Surrey, and Kent; whilst borings 
