Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES FOSSIL FUEL, THE COLLIERIES, AND COAL TRADE. SHEFFIELD : PRINTED BT G. RIDGE. MEROURT OFFICE. KING-STREET. THE HISTORY AND DESCRIPTION OF FOSSIL FUEL, THE COLLIERIES, AND COAL TRADE OF GREAT BRITAIN. BY THE AUTHOR OF THE TREATISE ON MANUFACTURES IN METAL,' (THREE VOLUMES,) IN LARDNER'S CABINET CYCLOPAEDIA. " COAL ONE OF THE MOST USEFUL OF ALL THE PRODUCTIONS OF THE EARTH WHICH IT HAS PLEASED THE ALMIGHTY TO PROVIDE FOR THE USE OF MAN." Petition to Parliament, from Staffordshire Collieries. LONDON : WHITTAKER AND CO., AVE MARIA LANE J AND G. RIDGE, KING-STREET, SHEFFIELD. 1835. PKEFACE IN presenting this Work to the puhlic, the Author has to bespeak the indulgence of certain classes of individuals, whose anticipated gratification he can only hope to have partially succeeded in realizing : he alludes to those who may happen to be profes- sionally engaged in any of the branches of science or business touched upon in the following pages. Should it, therefore, be discovered that the writer of this treatise is neither a Geologist, a Collier, nor a Coal Merchant, the harshness of criticism may surely be deprecated, until some one avowedly possessing such threefold qualification shall compile a volume better adapted than the present for po- pular instruction, and more accurately conformable to the present state of knowledge in reference to the various matters discussed. That the subject is an interesting one, few per- sons, it may be presumed, will deny : indeed, this fact is abundantly illustrated by the importance attached to disquisitions on one branch of it, by :1 117034 v VI PREFACE. geological writers to another of its bearings, by the legislature and to the third, by the whole community : for the origin and position of our stores of fossil fuel have abundantly exercised the learning of the first class ; the regulation of its vend at home and abroad, the attention of the second ; and the economical application of it, is confessedly of transcendent importance to the third class comprising, as it also does, both the others. On these grounds, the writer whose literary avocations have brought him into contact with cognate inquiries, and who, on other accounts, may perhaps be allowed to presume he is not quite unqualified for the task thought that a compre- hensive but somewhat compendious notice of the whole subject, as announced in the title-page, and arranged as a sort of monograph, while it would be convenient and useful for the library in general, could hardly fail to be acceptable to many persons who, without wishing to push their inquiries into those voluminous publications through which the matter lies scattered, much less who think of em- barking capital in the coal trade on the credit of any literary recommendation, might nevertheless be glad to meet with a succinct description of what has been done in the various departments, and the bearing of which is actually so important. PREFACE. Vll Changing the person, and adopting the sentiment of Mr. Williams, who, in 1789, puhlished at Edin- burgh a Natural History of the Mineral Kingdom, written in a quaint and prolix style, " I am really concerned for the honour of the coal : it is an in- teresting subject, especially in Britain ;" I cannot, however, entirely adopt the next member of the sentence, correct as it may have been half a cen- tury ago "and, as very little to the purpose has been said about it hitherto, that I know of, I reckon the subject my own, and therefore," adds our author, " I wish to be its faithful historian." Entertaining, as I have done, this laudable wish, and having laboured surely not without some success to realize it in these pages, I cannot justly complain either of a paucity of materials, or of those not being to the purpose : my only appre- hension is, lest I may have been unfortunate enough in some instances to have overlooked, or unsatis- factorily to have exhibited, such as were the most excellent. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY FIRE AND FUEL. Page Fire Its obvious properties Corpuscular and undulating theories Sources of Fire The Sun Lightning Chemical action Notices of the production of Fire by friction Uses of Fire In connexion with Religion For Culinary purposes For pro- moting personal comfort In the operations of Metallurgy and the Arts Agents or supporters of Combustion Bituminous and animal substances, or products Dung and Sea-weed Peat, Wood, and Mineral Fuels 1 CHAPTER II. GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. Interesting character of Geological Science Extent of knowledge required for successful investigation Controversies and con- flicting theories Important connexion between Geology and Revelation Question of progressive developement of Species Hutton and Werner Subterranean temperature Paroxysmal and Cataclysmal Eras of MM. Beaumont, Brongniart, and Cuvier Jameson's Remarks Mineral and Mosaical Geologies contrasted Fairholine Theory of Werner Tabular view of the positions of Strata Formations Gradation of Fossils of vegetable origin 17 CHAPTER III. PEAT. Early use of Peat for Fuel Its abundance in various countries Hypothesis of the discovery of its inflammable nature Notices of the knowledge and application of Peat in ancient times Theories of the origin of Turf deposits Various opinions and testimonials concerning the bituminization of Vegetable Matter Plants which chiefly enter into the composition of Peat bogs Irish and Scotch bog mosses Extraneous remains found in Peat bogs Analogy between the depositions of some stratified turbaries and the Coal formation Method of digging and b X CONTENTS. Page preparing Peat in Ireland Varieties of Peat Old practice of charring Turf Popular prejudices in favour of Peat Fuel 40 CHAPTER IV. NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. Nature and origin of Coal Different opinions which have been entertained on that subject Hypothetical queries answered Inferences and illustrations of the vegetable origin of Coal Chemical investigations of Mr. Hatchett Three conditions of Fossil Fuel ; submerged forests, lignites or biturninized wood, and true Coal Description of the Bovey Coal formation Sup- posed state of the atmosphere at the period when the Coal Vegetables flourished Remarks on the prodigious supply of materials Forests and drift wood Have the vegetable matters forming the Coal strata been floated from a distance, or did they originally grow in situations near to those places where, in their changed condition, they are now found? Causes which may have operated in effecting the bituminization of the Coal plants Opinions of Mr. Penn and others Supposed peaty origin of Coal Anthracite 57 CHAPTER V. ORGANIC REMAINS. Opinions of the Ancients concerning Organic Remains Equi- vocal generation Operation of plastic and forming energies Conditions of vegetable remains Families of plants existing at the period when the Coal beds were deposited Plants of the upper Coal Cycadiform fronds Ligneous fossils of the true Coal formation Mr. Witham's observations Modifying causes of the variety of casts of stems discovered in different substances Figures and descriptions Microscopical examination of the minute structure of fossil bodies Probability that trees of the more complicated woody structure, as w ell as the merely vascular and cellular kinds, existed at the period of the Coal formation Fossil fishes Muscles Question of toads found alive in the Coal rocks Button's observations on the traces of existing vegetable tissues in the perfect kinds of Coal 85 CHAPTER VI. THE COAL FORMATION. Review of the arrangement of carboniferous strata, as forming Coal fields, Coal basins, and Coal measures Arrowsmith's Map of the Coal districts Somersetshire Coal field South Gloucestershire or Bristol Coal field Forest of Dean South Welsh Coal field Shropshire field South Staffordshire and Warwickshire North Staffordshire North Wales Lancashire Page Coal field Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Derbyshire Coal fields Whitehaven Coal field Northumberland and Durham Unexplored localities in England Scotch Coal fields Ayrshire Paisley Lanarkshire East Lothian C ulross Irish Coal fields Districts of Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster Description of a Coal basin Somersetshire and South Welsh basins Mantle, and inverted basin shapes Swilleys or small basins lio CHAPTER VII. COAL MEASURES. Meaning of the terms " Coal Measures" Arrangement, contor- tions, and dislocations of strata Vertical section of a deep pit near Newcastle Tabular view of substances passed through Gosforth colliery Depth of the High Main Seam at Jarrow Sections of Mines at Dudley and Bilston Inequality in the thickness of matter occurring between certain Coal seams Tabular view of strata at Whitehaven Synopsis of Coal measures at Ashby-de-la-Zouch Staffordshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and Yorkshire Coal fields Sheffield Section at Halifax Notices of the Coal strata in South Wales, Scotland, and Ireland Occurrence of iron ores in the Coal formation... 129 CHAPTER VIII. DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. Common occurrence of fissured strata Longmire's theory of veins, dykes, rents, slips, &c. How characterised Up-throw and down-throw dykes Section of fractured Coal measures at Jar- row Enormous disturbances produced by faults Great trap dyke of Yorkshire and Durham The ninety-fathom dyke of Northumberland The seventy-yards Whin dyke The " great Derbyshire denudation" of Farey Non-conformity of overlying and subjacent masses Supposed igneous origin of trap or basaltic dykes Advantages of those dislocations misnamed " faults" Professor Buckland's observations 157 CHAPTER IX. BORING AND SINKING. Relative Views of the Miner and the Geologist in searching for Coal Extent and localities of carboniferous strata mostly ascertained Superficial indications of Coal Examination by boring Description of boring apparatus Interesting nature of the search after mineral treasures Sizes of pits Windlass used in commencement of sinking Walling inside the shaft TubbingBlasting with gunpowder Description of the horse Page gin Expensiveness of sinking deep pits Petnberton's shaft at Monkwearmouth Adits or drifts 172 CHAPTER X. WORKING MACHINERY. Drawing and air shafts Importance of Ventilation Draining the Mine Bearing of strata Early contrivances for raising the water Bucket wheels Steam-engine Boulton and Watt- Pumping apparatus Subterranean Steam-engines Deep Pits divided by Bratticing Head Gear Whimsey Steam-engine and counterpoise Hydraulic Machinery for raising Coals Corves, Trams, Buckets, and Waggons Screen Entrance to Pits by Canals andFootrails 191 CHAPTER XI. UNDERGROUND WORKS AND VENTILATION. Methods of Carrying out the Underground Excavations of a Col- lieryBroad and Long Work Roads, Benks, and Gates- Plan of a Staffordshire Colliery Ventilation Theory of the Circulation ot Atmospheric Air Downcast and Upcast Shafts Furnace Simple and Compound Ventilation Other contri- vancesDescription of Felling Colliery, Durham Extensive and orderly arrangements Fire Damp and Choke Damp Scheme of Ventilation proposed by Mr. Menzies Blowers or jets of Inflammable Gas How got rid of. 211 CHAPTER XII. GETTING THE COAL. Ideas of unpleasantness and danger associated with Coal Pits in general Few persons like to descend to inspect the subterra- nean workings An interesting sight to the Visitor Impressions experienced in traversing the deep fiery mines about New- castle Plan of removing the pillars which support the roof Crushes or creeps Working crept Coal Appearance of the Pitmen underground Steel mill Use of Horses Anecdote Employment of Females Implements used by the Collier Fractures of the Coal Backs, cutters, and partings Method of breaking down the Live Coal Attempts at the introduction of Machinery 232 CHAPTER XIII. UNDERGROUND ACCIDENTS. Various dangers to which the Collier is exposed Falling of matters from the roof of the Mine Cauldron bottoms, bell moulds, and bleas Irruptions of Water Instances of Flooding CONTENTS. Xiii Page Occurrence of Subterranean Fires from natural, accidental, and wilful causes Explosions from Inflammable Gas Dread- ful Accident at Felling Colliery Details of the Catastrophe Fire Damp and Choke Damp 247 CHAPTER XIV. THE SAFETY LAMP. Circumstances which led to the formation of a Society for Pre- venting Accidents in Collieries Application to Sir Humphrey Davy Chemical Composition of the inflammable Gas of the Mines Will not explode in small Tubes, nor from contact with red-hot Iron or Charcoal First Safe Lantern Wire-Gauze Cage Description of the Common Safety Lamp Testimonials of respect to Sir H. Davy Opinions of Mr. Buddie and Mr. Fenwick in favour of the "Davy" Petition of the Stafford- shire Colliers Circumstances under which Explosions have taken place in connexion with the Davy Lamp 268 CHAPTER XV. THE COLLIERS. Pitmen possess distinct Characteristics Working in the Mines an ancient penal employment Intelligence of Colliers, and Indi- viduals vho have risen into notice from among them Morals, Recreations and Tastes Wages Dwellings and Habits of the Pitmen about Newcastle Denominations of Overseers and Workmen Undertakers of Coal Pits in Staffordshire The Col- liers Instance of their mode of exciting Charity Misunder- standings between the Tyne Pitmen and their Masters Com- binations A "Stick" or Strike Injurious consequences of the Disputes Murder of a Magistrate Gibbet on J arrow Slake... 286 CHAPTER XVI. THE COAL TRADE. Fossil Coal little if at all known to the nations of Antiquity Mentioned by Theophrastus Supposed to have been used by the Ancient Britons Old Cinder Heaps Coal mentioned by Saxon Authors Extract from the " Bolden Book" Charter to the Inhabitants of Newcastle to dig Coals Sea Coal Evidence of Early Modes of Working Hostemen Earliest Notice of Exportation of Coals Charitable Donations of Coals For- merly burned along with Wood Early states of the Coal Trade Richmond Shilling Complaints of the decrease and waste of Fire-wood Historical Notice of the Introduction of Pit Coal into common use Evelyn's Lamentation on the Decay of Forests Coincidence in the Deposits of Coal and Ironstone Page Difficulties encountered in substituting Pit Coal for Charcoal in making Iron Notices of the Coal Trade on the Rivers Tyne, Wear, and Tees 305 CHAPTER XVII. VARIETIES OF COAL. Composition of Coal Gradations of Fossil character Mineral arrangement Brown Coal Black Coal Glance Coal Sub- species of each kind Varieties in the Trade Difficult to identify several sorts Qualities of Coal English, Welsh, and Scotch Coals Evolution of unconsumed matters during com- bustion Burning of Smoke Stone Coal 330 CHAPTER XVIII. CONVEYANCE OF COAL. Earliest Methods of conveying Coals On the backs of Beasts In Carts and Waggons Tippler Staiths Drop and Spout Origin of Rail-Roads Waggons Self-acting Railway Keels, or Coal Barges Method of Navigating Keels Hostemen, or Fitters Maritime and River Trade Coal Trade the Nursery of Seamen Impressment 346 CHAPTER XIX. THE LONDON COAL TRADE. Early Legislative Regulations Use of Pit Coal formerly prohibited in London Growth of the Coal Trade Duties laid upon Coal Regulation of the Vend Charges upon a cargo of Coals at the place of Shipment, and Coastwise Charges in the Port of London Enactments relative to the Coal Trade Method of transacting business Ship and Land Meters Coal Bushel Parliamentary enquiries Opinions of the Committees Proposal to substitute Sale by Weight in lieu of Sale by Measure Breakage of Coal Sales by the Chaldron abolished by Act of Parliament, and Sales by the Hundred weight authorised Suspension of the Law respecting Meterage Duties chargeable upon Coal Discharge of the Cargoes of Vessels in the Thames Progressive State of the Trade 367 CHAPTER XX. IRISH, SCOTCH, AND WELSH COAL TRADE. Importation of Coals into Ireland Dublin supplied from White- haven Various Coal Ports Legislative Regulations Sales by Weight and by Measure Coals allowed to be imported duty free, for certain Manufactories Scotland behind England in the methods of working Collieries- Coal taken to Scotland duty CONTENTS. XV Page free Sold by Weight Scotch Coal sent coastwise South Welsh Trade-Newport-Small Coal, or Culm Coal Balls 389 CHAPTER XXI. CONVERSION AND PRODUCTS OF COAL. Manufacture of Toys, &c. from Glance Coal, Cannel Coal, and Jet Pulverised Coal Copperas Bituminous products of Coal Pitch Lake Early experiments on Mineral Tar Natural Fountains of Gas Earl of Dundonald's Patent The Distilla- tion of Coal First exhibition of Artificial Gas Manufactured for purposes of Illumination Residual Matters Ammoniacal Liquor and Coal Tar Incineration of Coal Hard and Soft Coke Processes of Preparation Branching Coal Smoke, Soot, and Ashes , 398 CHAPTER XXII. HOME CONSUMPTION. Extent of Home Consumption Importance of Coal in the gene- ration of Steam Steam Engines Manufactures of Earthen- ware and Glass Statements of Mr. Pellatt Gas Works Iron Works Consumption of Coal in Sheffield Manchester Bir- mingham Leeds Liverpool London Consumption in the United Kingdom Tax on Coals or Hearths proposed Waste of Coal at the Collieries 416 CHAPTER XXIII. FOREIGN COAL TRADE. Early Notices of Exportation of Coal During the Reigns of Henry VIII. and Queen Elizabeth Charles the First Act of Trade, 1663 Lord North's Reasons for taxing the Coal Trade to Foreign Ports Produce of our Coal Fields essentially dif- ferent from that of our Manufactories Considerations relative to Free Trade Politic Objections to an unrestricted Foreign Vend Opinions of Mr. Brandling and Mr. Buddie Professor Sedgwick and Dr. Buckland Scale of Duties on Coals im- ported, in 1831 Reduced in 1834 Duties on Coals sent abroad abolished in 1835 Impost levied on Coals at Foreign Ports Remarks on the Policy of the Duties in the Ports of France... 435 CHAPTER XXIV. PROBABLE DURATION OF OUR COAL. Difficult to assign the consumption of Coal for future periods Estimate of the quantity remaining unwrought in Durham and Northumberland Statements of Mr. Taylor and Professor Sedgwick Decay of the Northern Mines will probably transfer the London Coal Trade to Scotland and South Wales Quantity of workable Coal probably overrated Opinions of Dr. Thomson and Mr. Bakewell, relative to the duration of the Northern Collieries 454 CHAPTER XXV. FOREIGN COAL DEPOSITS. Importance of Foreign Coal Deposits to Great Britain General Phenomena of the Carboniferous Strata similar in different countries Organic Remains and accompanying Rocks Inde- pendent Coal Formation of Werner Occurrence of Coal in Spain near Dresden In Silesia Vast Deposits in France In Belgium Fire Damp Coal Fields of Germany Fossil Fishes Coal in Sweden, Norway, and Poland Immense De- positories of Anthracite and Bituminous Coal in North America Scarcity of Fuel in some parts of South America Rhode Island, Canada, and Australia contain Coal Strata on Fire at Cape Breton European Localities of Lignite and Fossil Wood. 464 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY FIRE AND FUEL. Fire Its obvious properties Corpuscular and un- dulatory theories Sources of Fire The Sun Lightning Chemical action Notices of the pro- duction of Fire by friction Uses of Fire In connexion with Religion For culinary purposes For promoting personal comfort In the opera- tions of Metallurgy and the Arts Agents or sup- porters of Combustion Bituminous and animal substances, or products Dung and Sea-weed Peat, Wood, and Mineral Fuels . JT IRE, according to the old writers, is one of the four primary qualities or conditions of matter, or in other words, that elementary substance which has the property of devouring other bodies, the other three elements, according to the ancient theory, being air, earth, and water : to speak more philosophically, it is that subtle substance by pervasion with which bodies are rendered hot to the touch, and, if previously solid, become at a certain temperature fluid, and are after- wards either carried off in vapour or melted into glass : or by the application of which, fluids, as com- monly spoken of, are rarefied into vapour. In the most B 2 FIRE AND FUEL. ordinary sense, Fire is understood to mean matter in a state of combustion or incandescence : and it is in this acceptation more particularly, that the term is used in the present work. During the eighteenth century, the supposed general principle of heat, or inflammability, was called phlogistion, a term invented to suit the theory of Stahl, which assumed and thus designated such principle, as a constituent element of all combustibles. But Lavoisier, who died in 1794, introduced a new theory, depending on the existence of what is called caloric, a denomination universally adopted by modem chemists. It assumes that combustion is caused by the combination of the oxygen of the atmosphere, not with hydrogen, or with the imaginary substance of phlogistion, but with the combustible itself, and that in such combination light and heat are produced.* It would be out of place in a work like the present, to enter into any lengthened investigation of the nature of tliis agency to which the phenomena of light and heat are ascribed ; or in what respects it seems to fail to account for some existing facts. It may be remarked, however, that by one class of theorists, heat has been hypothetically regarded as a fluid of inappreciable tenuity, whose particles are endowed with indefinite ideo-repulsive powers, and which, by their distribution in various proportions among the particles of ponderable matter, modify cohesive attraction, giving birth to the three general forms of gaseous, liquid, and solid.f Another class of philosophers, among whom ranks the cele- brated Sir Humphrey Davy, have doubted the sepa- rate entity of a calorific matter, and have adduced * Lardner's Treatise on Heat, p. 365. f Dr. Uro. THEORIES OF HEAT. 3 evidence to shew that the phenomena might rather be referred to a vibratory or intestinal motion of the par- ticles of common matter. Under no circumstances, notwithstanding that philosophers have paid the mi- nutest attention to the subject, does it appear that the communication of heat has ever been found to make any appreciable addition to the gravity of the matter pervaded by it, which, if it were a substance sui gene- ris, we might be led to expect. Dr. Lardner, how- ever, remarks that " the material theory has the ad- vantage of offering an easily intelligible explanation of the phenomena of heat, so far as it is at all appli- cable or satisfactory. On the other hand, the vibra- tory theory is involved in the difficulty of requiring more acute powers of mind to apprehend its force, or even to understand any of its applications. Indeed, it would scarcely admit of full exposition without the use of the language and symbols of the higher Ma- thematics ; but, perhaps, the strongest support which the vibratory theory can derive, is from the facts which render it probable that light and heat are iden- tical. If," adds the Doctor, " the identity of heat and light be admitted, then the question of the nature of heat is removed to that of light, respecting which two theories have been proposed, precisely similar to those of heat ; viz., the corpuscular and the undula- tory theories. Both of these theories serve to explain the bulk of optical phenomena; but some effects, discovered by modem investigation in physical optics, are considered to be more satisfactorily explained by the undulatory theory : the question, however, re- mains unsettled."* From an examination of these Treatise on Heat, p. 398. B 2 4 FIRE AND FUEL. and other theories, enough will be learned to shew how little room there is to pronounce dogmatic deci- sions on the abstract nature of heat. But, as Dr. Ure justly remarks if the source of the cause be still involved in mystery, many of its properties and effects have been ascertained, and skilfully applied to the cultivation of science and the uses of life. The primary sources of fire are very various in their technical sub-divisions : they may, however, be generally included in the following distribution,, com- prising those that may be termed natural, as well as those that are artificial: 1. The Sun. 2. Light- ning. 3. Chemical combinations. 4. Friction or collision. 1 . The most obvious source of igneous action with which mankind has always been familiar, is un- doubtedly that orb from whence our earth is indebted for light and heat. It is not, indeed, probable that the earliest fires kindled by the progenitors of the human race were derived immediately from this lu- minary as they could not be acquainted with the method of collecting its rays by the burning glass, nor of concentrating them by the concave mirror : it is now, however, well known, that in some parts of the world vegetable and other matters may be in a state of dryness and inflammability, sufficient to allow them to become ignited by the mere action of the solar heat upon them. 2. Lightning, although happily for mankind not a common agent of terrestrial inflammation, is much less rarely so than the sun. While the instances of combustion through the influence of a coup cle soleil strike us as uncommon, not a year passes but we hear of the fatal or destructive consequences of what SOURCES OF FIRE. 5 is called, with equal poetry and truth, by the common people, the "falling of the thunderbolt:" and al- though a sudden consumption, torrefaction, or at least piercing, of the object stricken, is the more usual phenomenon, yet the works of man, forests, and even beds of coal, are sometimes set on fire by the electric flash. 3. The most remarkable, active, and violent local sources of fire on the large scale of nature are, how- ever, those vast magazines of chemical action^ vol- canoes. At what period man first became acquainted with the outbreaks of these tremendous laboratories of nature, or how nearly he at first approached them, we do not know: we have, however, accounts of eruptions which date from a very remote antiquity ; and, according to some theorists, these reservoirs of central fire are coeval with the present formation of our planet the earth being, in fact, according to Whiston, an extinct comet, the crust of which has cooled down to its present temperature, while the core is still in a state of fusion. Akin to tliis notion, is the theory of that class of geologists called the Plutonists, who contend that the greater dislocations of the various strata of which, so far as we know, the earth is composed, and the various combinations into which these have obviously entered with each other, are attributable to igneous action, in opposition to the Neptunists, or disciples of Werner, who pretend that water has been the principal agent in the pro- duction of those phenomena which it is in the pro- vince of the geologist to investigate and classify. To say nothing of those scientific contrivances by means of which Modern Chemistry has furnished the world with so many sources from which fire may be derived, FIRE AND FUEL. it is well known that sulphureous or bituminous ex- halations, or what may be called " fountains of fire," exist in various pails of the world ; and although the matter of these gaseous vents is more frequently in- flamed by art, yet there seems no reason to doubt but that they may have been occasionally lighted by a concurrence of natural causes, and even have offered to man some of the earliest opportunities for transfer- ring ignition to a more substantial pabulum ; as well as afforded those flames, at which was very early lighted the torch of superstition. 4. As, however, we find that the process of pro- curing fire by many savage nations at this day is by rubbing two pieces of dry wood together until they inflame by the friction, so we may presume that this would be the original method resorted to for the arti- ficial procuration of fire in the first ages of the world. This effect, indeed, if we may believe ancient authors, has sometimes been produced by the operation of natural causes, and that too on a large scale : for they tell us of the conflagration of forests by the violent rubbing together of the tall trunks of resinous trees during strong winds.* The quaint old French poet, Du Bartus, who found a most doggerel English translator in Joshua Sylvester, at the beginning of the reign of James I., has, in his " Devine Weeks * Conflagrations from the cause alluded to, appear to be far from uncom- mon in some parts of India. The Rev. H. Caunter, describing a fire which swept up the sides of the mountains skirting the Coaduar Ghaut, near Calcutta, forming a sea of fire to the extent of several miles, informs us, that " this striking phenomenon is not by any means uncommon, and is ac- counted for by the larger bamboos, as they are swayed by the wind, emitting lire from their hard glossy stems through the violence of their friction, and thus spreading destruction through the mountain forests." Oriental Annual, 1835. FRICTION AND COLLISION. 7 and Works/' a curious passage describing " how the first man invented fire, for the use of himself and his posterity." The passage is prolix ; but the fancy wliich represents Adam and Eve as approaching so nearly the invention of the tinder-box, has thrown an ail' of singularity over the story, sufficient to repay its perusal. Our first Parents having been cast out of Paradise, had, according to the poet, made them- selves a dwelling ; " Yet fire they lack't : but lo, the windes that whistle Amid the groues, so oft the Laurell iustle Against the Mulbery, that their angry claps Do kindle fire that burns the neighbour cops. When Adam saw a ruddy vapour rise In glowing streams ; astund with fear he flyes, It follows him, vntil a naked plain The greedy fury of the flame restrain : Then back he turns, and comming somwhat nigher The kindled shrubs, perceiving that the fire Dries his dank cloathes, his colour doth refresh, And unbenums his sinews and his flesh ; By th' vnbumt end a good big brand he takes, And hying home a fire he quickly makes, And still maintains it till the starry twins' Celestial breath another fire begins. But Winter being comm again it griev'd him, T' have lost so fondly what so much reliev'd him, Trying a thousand ways, sith now no more The iustling trees his domage would restore. While, elsewhere musing, one day he sat down Vpon a steep rock's craggy forked crown, A foaming beast come toward him he spies, Within whose head stood burning coals for eyes : Then suddainly with boisterous arm he throwes A knobbie flint that hummeth as it goes ; Hence flies the beast, th' il-aimed flint-shaft grounding Against the rock, and on it oft rebounding, Shivers to cinders, whence there issued Small sparks of fire no sooner born than dead. FIRE AND FUEL. This happy chance made Adain leap for glee, And quickly calling his cold companie, In his left hand a shining flint he locks, Which with another in his right he knocks So vp and down, that from the coldest stone At every stroak small fiery sparkles shone. Then with the dry leaves of a withered bay The which together handsomely they lay, They take the falling fire, which like a sun Shines cleer and smoakless in the leaf begun. Eve, kneeling down, with hand her head sustaining, And on the low ground with her elbow leaning, Blowes with her rnouth : and with her gentle blowing Stirs up the heat, that from the dark leaves glowing, Kindles the reed, and then that hollow kix First fires the small, and they the greater sticks." The accounts given by Cook and other circum- navigators, of the method practised by the South Sea Islanders for obtaining fire by friction, have been abundantly verified by recent voyagers. The follow- ing exceedingly intelligible description of the pro- cess as practised at Tahite, is from the " Journal of Voyages and Travels by the Rev. Daniel Tyennaii and George Bennet, Esq. in the South Sea Islands, &c." compiled by Mr. Montgomery. " We had an opportunity," say the Journalists, " of observing the simple and ingenious process by which the island- ers obtain fire. A man took a piece of dry purau wood, twelve inches long, and two tliick. With another stick of the same tree, sharpened to a point, and held with both liis hands, at an angle of about 45, he nibbed the former gently, as it lay on the ground, till he had scratched a groove in it several inches long. Then continuing the same operation, but pressing the point harder upon the lower piece, and increasing the velocity of the motion, some brown USES OF FIRE. 9 dust was soon formed within the groove, and collected at one end. In a few seconds smoke was apparent, and the dust was ignited. The spark was then im- mediately conveyed into a finger-hole opened in a handful of dry grass. The man blew upon it, and waving the tuft in the air, the grass was quickly in a flame. The whole experiment did not occupy more than two minutes."* Various as are the sources from which fire may be obtained, the purposes to which it has been applied are inconceivably more diversified. To enumerate all these purposes would be impossible : it may, how- ever, be interesting to mention the heads, to one or other of which most of the objects in lighting up artificial fires may be referred : I. In connexion with Religion : II. For culinary purposes : III. For promoting personal comfort by means of warmth : and IV. For the various operations of Metallurgy and the Arts. I. Under the first of these heads we are called upon to notice the application of fire for a purpose infinitely different from the tliree that follow, and also to recognise a derivation of the element not in . the slightest degree referable to any of the before- mentioned sources ; we allude to the consuming of the animal sacrifices under the Patriarchal and Mo- saic institutions of the Old Testament, by " fire from * Other authorities describe the plan as consisting in giving a rapid mo- tion to a pointed stick, in the manner of a vertical spindle; by neither method, however, does it appear that Europeans hare been able to effect that which they saw the savages so readily accomplish. 10 FIRE AND FUEL. heaven." It is probable that the fire which was kept burning on the altars in the Temple at Jerusalem was so derived,* as the element visibly descended and consumed the sacrifice when the LORD made a covenant with Abraham, when Moses dedicated the Tabernacle, and when Solomon dedicated the Temple : it was always considered sacred, and the offering with "strange fire" was considered an abomination in the sight of JEHOVAH. Besides its important application as an auxiliary in the Hebrew sacrifiture, fire became an object of actual worsliip with several Gentile na- tions in the East. The Chaldeans accounted it a divinity ; and in the province of Babylon there was a city called Ur, or of fire, consecrated to tin's usage. The Persians also adored GOD under the similitude of fire, because it is fire that gives motion to every thing in Nature : they had temples called Pyrcea, or fire temples, set apart for the preservation of the sacred element. The priests among the Persian fire- worshippers are called Ghebers, and a splendid chap- ter is devoted to the subject of their mysteries in Moore's exquisite poem of " Lalla Rookh." They are said to have fires at present subsisting among them that have been burning several thousand years.f In Old Rome, fire was worsliipped in honour of the goddess Vesta, and virgins called vestals were ap- * Catholic writers tell us, that on Good Friday an interdiction ensued in the Romish Church, and all the fires were totally extinguished. Conse- quently, it was usual to provide charcoal on Easter eve, for renewing the fires on Easter day; when, however, they were kindled again, it was done by elemental fire produced by flint and steel, and not from unhallowed em- bers. From this fire, the Paschal-taper was also lighted. f So superstitiously do the Parsees regard the element of fire, that if a conflagration breaks out, instead of endeavouring to quench it with water, they pull down the houses liable to be consumed, that the fire may go out for want of combustible matter to feed it. In their temples they keep fires of the most costly \voods constantly burning. MAN, A FIRE-MAKING ANIMAL. II pointed to keep it up. Other nations,* as the Gauls, and some of the aboriginal American tribes, paid veneration to fire. II. The earliest application of fire for civil or do- mestic uses, would undoubtedly be in the cooking of victuals : for no nation has hitherto been discovered in such a state of barbarism as to be unacquainted with the arts of procuring and the culinary applica- tion of fire. Man, indeed, among many other whim- sical definitions of the genus Homo, has been called " a fire-making animal," because it has been asserted that he of all creatures is capable of procuring, keep- ing up, and turning to account factitious combustion. Although lighting fires and waving brands are among the means adopted to frighten away wild beasts from the presence of man, many of the inferior animals are known to be exceedingly fond of artificial warmth ; but they have no instincts conformable to the means of procuring it for themselves. Even apes, the most sagacious imitators of the actions of man, fond as they generally are of basking near a fire, appear to have no instinct which leads them to rake together the embers, or add more fuel to prevent it from expiring. This may be regarded as an obvi- ously wise arrangement of Providence ; for had that mischievous disposition which so commonly charac- . * Among the Hindoos, a great number of mystical ceremonies and invo- cations are referred to Paraki as the regent of fire. This fire-king is, how- ever, more commonly worshipped under the name of Agni ; and the follow- ing, according to the institutions of Menu, is one of the common Brahmini- cal invocations of that deity: "Fire! Seven are thy fuels; seven thy tongues ; seven thy holy sages ; seven thy beloved abodes ; seven ways do seven sacrifices worship thee; thy sources are seven; may this oblation be efficacious ! " An explanation of this mysterious passage has been given by Mr. Colebrooke, in his Essay on the Religious Ceremonies of the Hindoos, in the seventh volume of the " Asiatic Researches." 12 FIRE AND FUEL. terises the Simla species, been extended to a fond- ness for playing with ignited matters, the conse- quences might have been disastrous indeed; for what meddlesome monkey would not have been lia- ble, could he have picked up a lighted brand, to have become the Erostratus of his own particular forest ! * III. The use of fire for the purpose of promoting personal comfort, by raising the temperature of some portion of the surrounding atmosphere, although co- extensive with its application to the cooking of vic- tuals in our own and several other countries, is never- theless by no means of so common occurrence in tropical and other warm climates. In Northern Europe, Asia, and America, the amount of fuel con- sumed for this purpose alone is prodigious ; and, cer- tainly, 110 where more than in England, is the luxury of what are called "good fires" carried to an extent which, independently of other considerations, renders the subject discussed in the following pages one of paramount importance in a commercial, as well as physical, point of view. Every dwelling-house in the kingdom, however small or poor and, it may be added, nearly every temple of religion, as well as every shop, mill, and manufactory each has its ap- propriate apparatus for keeping up internal warmth, and is for the most part thus linked to the importance of the coal trade. It modifies, indeed, but does not * It has indeed been said, that the tall monkeys of Borneo and Sumatra not only lie down with pleasure round any accidental fire in their woods, " but," it is added, " they are arrived to that degree of reason, that know- ledge of causation, that they thrust into the remaining fire the half-burnt ends of the branches, to prevent its going out." The reality of this fact, especially as connected with " that knowledge of causation" which is just mentioned, appears more than doubtful. WARMTH, AND SMELTING. 13 destroy, the importance of this connection, whether the modern modes adopted for heating be regarded as consisting of any of the innumerable varieties of stoves, hot-air vessels, steam machines, or the more recent contrivances for warming apartments by means of pipes circulating water in a state of ebullition all are dependent upon the combustion of more or less of ignited matter in the state of fuel. IV. The most important application of fire, how- ever, is in the smelting of ores, the working of me- tals, and the carrying forwards those chemical opera- tions on a large scale, for which Great Britain and several other countries are so celebrated. The know- ledge of the effect of heat in separating metallic par- ticles from the earthy or other masses in which they might be found embedded, is of the highest antiquity; and from the days of Tubal Cain, " the first instruc- tor of all artificers in iron and brass," to the present time, mankind have attached increasing importance to metallurgic operations, and to the arts depending thereupon. And, not only from the records of the earliest ages, but from almost every section of the globe inhabited by man, whether in a savage or a civilized state, we derive fresh materials for evidence in illustration of the dominion which human industry and ingenuity have sought to establish over the mi- neral kingdom by the agency of fire. Some parti- culars relative to the different substances used as fuel, may appropriately close tin's Chapter. Of the agents of combustion, as defined by the strict nomenclature of Modern Chemistry, it is not necessary, in tliis place, to take farther notice than briefly to remark that some of these four substances oxygen, chlorine, bromine, and iodine being, almost 14 FIRE AND FUEL. in- every case, one of the two bodies by the combina- tion of which combustion is produced, and the other matters with which they severally combine being far more numerous, the four just mentioned are distin- guished, relatively to the phenomena of combustion, by the name supporters of combustion; while the other body forming the combination with them, what- ever it may be, is called a combustible.* Reverting to less scientific phraseology, it may be remarked, that, whatever substance is either capable of being inflamed, or of remaining in a state of in- candescence, may come, in a certain sense, under the denomination of fuel. Hence, certain liquids, as alcohol, oil, &c., with all resinous, bituminous, and fatty matters on the one hand; and on the other, several fossil productions, with the intermediate vari- eties of structure, and ligneous bodies in general, may be at once referred to, as comprising the classes of bodies commonly used as supporters of combustion. Inflammable fluids, in any place, are more rarely used for the production of heat than of light ; and in this country, purely bituminous products are almost as seldom applied, by themselves, to the purposes of filing : in some parts of the world the case is widely different. Large quantities of naphtha are obtained on the shores of the Caspian sea ; and the inhabitants of Baku, one of its ports, are supplied with no other fuel than that obtained from the naphtha and petro- leum, with which the neighbouring country is highly impregnated. In the island of Wetoy, and on the peninsula of Apcheron, this substance is said to be very abundant, supplying immense quantities which * Larduer's Treatise OH Heat, p. 355. AGENTS OF COMBUSTION. 15 are earned away.* The inhabitants of other parts of the world, in the vicinity of Asphaltum springs, have recourse to the like substances for the purposes as well of cooking as of illumination ; for which ob- jects, also, the springs of natural gas are sometimes economically applied. Among some of the eastern nations, the dung of the camel and other herbivorous animals is carefully collected and dried for fuel. A number of curious particulars illustrative of this fact as regards the Jews, are collected byHarmer.j- A similar practice formerly prevailed in some of the midland counties of this kingdom. J Animal matter is sometimes, though rarely, used as fuel. The Arabs, however, who dwell in that part of their country bordering on Egypt, must be re- garded as forming in some degree an exception to the remark ; for they draw no inconsiderable portion of the fuel with which they cook their victuals from the exhaustiess mummy-pits, so often described by travellers. The extremely dry state of the bodies, and the inflammable nature of the matters with which they have apparently been saturated, during the pro- cess of embalming, render them exceedingly conve- nient for the above purpose. We have a still more striking instance : wood was formerly so scarce at Buenos Ayres, and cattle so plentiful, that sheep were * Edin. Phil. Journal, vol. v. f It is from the soot collected during the combustion of this fuel that the Egyptians procure sal-ammoniac, by simple sublimation. J The droppings of the cows were collected into heaps, and beaten into a mass with water : then pressed by the feet into moulds like bricks, by regu- lar professional persons, called clatters (dodders) ; then dried in the sun, and stacked like peat, and a dry March for the clat-harvest was considered as very desirable, Journal of a Naturalist. 1(5 FIRE AND FUEL. actually driven into the furnaces of lime-kilns, in order to answer the purposes of fuel. This fact could hardly have been mentioned as credible, however undoubted, if a decree of the King of Spain, prohi- biting this barbarous custom, were not still preserved in the archives of Buenos Ayres. The inhabitants of the sea-coasts, who happen to be remote from better fuel, or too poor to obtain it, collect sea-weed (Fucus vesiculosus, Linn.) and such like stuff for firing an indifferent enough material for the purpose, as may readily be supposed. In the Norman Isles, sea-weed is assiduously gathered by the inhabitants, both for fuel and manure : it is called in French varech, and in the Jersey dialect " vraic."* The most convenient, and happily the most abun- dant, kinds of fuel known in this and most civilised countries, are peat, dried wood, charcoal, and fossil coal, either in the state in which it is raised from the mine, or in the condition of coke. The liistory of peat, as immediately coming within the design of the present work, will form the subject of the next Chapter ; while wood fuel will be subsequently ad- verted to, in connection with those vicissitudes to which the iron and other trades in this country were exposed, during their transition from a dependence upon our decaying forests, to those inexhaustible depositories of coal, descriptions of the history, work- ing, and commercial importance of which can scarcely fail to impart a lively interest to the ensuing pages. * The season of collecting this substitute for coal and firewood is made a season of merriment in Jersey ; the times of vraicking are appointed by the island legislature, and then multitudes of carts, horses, boats, and vraickers cover the beach, the rocks, and the water. Ingles " Channel Islands'' vol i p. 99. CHAPTER II. GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. Interesting character of Geological Science Extent of knowledge required for successful investigation Controversies and conflicting theories Important connexion between Geology and Revelation Ques- tion of progressive developement of Species Hut- ton and Werner Subterranean temperature Pa- roxysmal and Cataclysmal Eras of MM. Beau- mont, Brongniart, and Cuvier Jameson's Remarks Mineral and Mosaical Geologies contrasted Fairholme TJieory of Werner Tabular view of the positions of Strata Formations Gradation of Fossils of vegetable origin. L HE science of Geology, a science still in its infancy, has been pursued of late years with an ardour commensurate to the importance of its bearings in relation to the physical structure of the earth, no less than as developing a series of phenomena of the most striking and interesting character. Nor is the study of this comprehensive subject at present confined in its scientific attractions to divines and philosophers on the one hand, nor on the other hand is it left to miners and metallurgists alone to estimate its practical im- 18 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. portance. It has become essential to a liberal educa- tion, that a man know something of the stratification of the globe upon which he lives, and to the fossil and mineral riches of which he is so largely indebted. Even under the softer designation of an accom- plishment, some acquaintance with the principles of Geology is not unfrequently acquired by individuals of both sexes as a source of elegant intellectual re- creation. Formerly, indeed, the few learned men who paid attention to this science, if science it could then be called, did so, either as the devisers and de- fenders of capricious theories, or as the champions or opponents of revelation, just as those theories were considered favourable or inimical to the Mosaic ac- counts of the Creation and the Deluge. To these learned controversies it is unnecessary farther to allude, as the present remarks are intended merely to introduce such a brief glimpse of geological doc- trines as may enable the general reader, in some degree, to understand the relative position of the beds of mineral coal among those numerous and diversified strata, with which the investigations of art and science have made us acquainted. The study of Geology in the extended sense, and as the subject is treated by recent writers, such as De la Beche and Lyell, particularly the latter, whose volu- minous work is extremely interesting, requires a comprehensive knowledge of geography, meteorology, anatomy, conchology, botany, and natural philosophy in general. For it is only to persons somewhat con- versant with the manner in which these and numerous other branches of physical investigation are made to bear upon the modes of accounting for various phe- nomena, discoverable in the present and recorded of IMPORTANCE OF GEOLOGY. 19 past states of the earth's crust, that the interest of the science can be rendered greatly apparent. The ele- vation of mountain-masses, the formation of valleys, the recession or encroachment of the sea, the pheno- mena of rivers and lakes, the activity of volcanoes, thermal springs, and the operation of numerous other causes, give rise to speculations which call forth the most ample resources of knowledge for their support, elucidation, or correction. In the developement of phenomena consequent on these enquiries, it is certainly not surprising that the reverers of the most ancient and authentic historical document in the world, should at all times have felt sensibly alive to whatever was put forth as evidence on this subject, whether appearing to confirm or to oppose the sacred cosmogony of the Book of Genesis. It must be admitted, however, that the advocates of the integrity of the sacred record have sometimes committed themselves and their righteous cause, by the exercise of a zeal not according to knowledge. Their error, to speak of it comprehensively, has been twofold : in the first place, they have hastily confided the sustentation of the credit of the Mosaic account to one plausible hypothesis or another, and these fail- ing, by the discovery that their foundations were not laid in physical facts, the enemies of revelation have assumed, still more unwarrantably, that the whole fabric of Divine Truth must be one of equal instabi- lity : in the second place, they have too often spoken and written as if, admitting the inspired authenticity of a passage, we are compelled to adopt as infallible its commonly received interpretation. This is, con- fessedly, a delicate point, and one in all disquisitions connected with which too great a degree of precaution c 2 20 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. cannot be exercised ; but it must be exercised on the part of the divine as well as the geologist ; for, while the latter produces facts, apparently in overwhelming abundance, to shew that certain notions long enter- tained may possibly be unfounded, and submits that the advocates of revelation act unwisely in forcing interpretations at variance with phenomena, the former has no right to place an issue of so much im- portance to mankind as the credibility of the Bible History, on the very dangerous presumption that no scheme of explanation, no method of reconciling seeming discrepancies, surpassing his own, can ever be attained to. Let it not be supposed for a moment, from what is here said, that it is intended to undervalue the labours of those who have sought to reconcile the modem discoveries in Geology with the commonly received interpretations of the Mosaic accounts of the creation and the deluge ; much less to throw any slight on the successful efforts of those who have shewn what may be accomplished in this way ; nor, least of all, let it be imagined that any apprehension is enter- tained, as if the testimony of physical phenomena can ever be opposed to the spirit of divine revelation. A competent authority has declared, that " the facts developed by Geology are consistent with the accounts of the creation and deluge, as recorded in the Mosaic writings." * It is against that presumptive principle which strives to make theology and physics, studies essentially distinct, the vehicles of perpetual reprisal, that the present caution is directed. A passing allusion to the systems of Hutton and * Bucklancl's Vindicije Geologicte. AGENCIES OF FIRE AND WATER. 21 Werner, usually recognised as the Plutonian and the Neptunian, from the paramount importance attached by the one to the agency of fire, and by the other to that of water, in the formation of our globe, has al- ready been made in the preceding Chapter. The absurd lengths to which some of the abettors of these conflicting theories have occasionally gone, in deriv- ing plausible generalizations from insulated or local phenomena, have taught modern geologists a useful lesson ; and the man would now -be thought insane who, overlooking the multitudinous examples of the undoubted agency of both causes on a large scale, should invoke, for the explanation of all difficulties, the genius of either fire or water exclusively. Many of the phenomena of the rocky masses exhibit une- quivocal traces of their double origin in the one case of refrigeration from igneous fusion, and in the other of concretion 'from aqueous solution. While some philosophers have assumed, that the central nucleus of our globe is in all probability ponderable matter in a condition of amazing density, others have imagined a cavity filled with water; and an American speculatist believed it to be hollow, and even accessible from the extreme north. Whatever be the matter occupying the " centre of our sphere," it may be presumed to exist in a state of such prodigious compression, as to present conditions little if at all analagous to matter in any mode with which we are acquainted with it. The long-agitated question as to whether the tem- perature of our planet increases towards the centre or not, has received little illustration from facts : the assertion, therefore, that the increment of temperature corresponds on the average to about 1 Fahrenheit for 22 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. every seven fathoms of descent, rests rather on theory than experience. It must be obvious that thermome- trical results obtained in mines, with the utmost pre- caution, are very liable to prove fallacious ; con- ducted, however, by skill and experience, they may become of importance.* With reference to the great outlines of two con- flicting geological theories, to which more especial attention has been excited of late, it may be briefly observed, that one, and that the longest and most generally entertained, assumes the creation of the matter of our globe to have taken place about six thousand years ago ; that in six days, of twenty-four hours each,f it was not only modified into terrene, aqueous, and aerial relations, but also replenished with vegetable and animal life ; subsequently to which primeval settlement, it has undergone one great catastrophe by water ; and that this, along with the * For a series of interesting experiments of this class, made by John Phil- lips, Esq., F.G.S., in one of the deepest mines in the world, and under very favourable circumstances, vide London and Edinburgh Phil. Journ. Dec. 1834. f The well-known American Professor Silliman has put a question which is intended as an experimentum crucis for the interpretation adverted to. " Supposing," says the Professor, " that there are inhabitants at the poles of the earth, how must they understand the days of the creation ? To them a day of light is six months long, and a night of darkness six months long; and the day, made up of night and day, covers a year; and it is a day, too, limited by morning and evening. Such persons, therefore, must suppose. upon the literal understanding of the days of creation, that at least six vears were employed upon the work. So also at the polar-circles, there is every year one day that is, one continued vision of the sun for twenty- four hours and one continued night of twenty-four hours : while every where within the polar-circles, the days and the nights respectively are for six months more than twenty- four hours, extending even, as we advance towards the poles, through the time of many of our days and nights. How are the in- habitants of these regions to understand the week of the creation, if limited to the literal interpretation of the inspired record? " Surely the above is philosophical trifling, to designate it by no harsher a term. Do the Lap- landers ever regard the period of absence of the sun during their winter as the measure of their night? CONFLICTING OPINIONS. 23 operation of causes still going on, are sufficient to account for all the phenomena observed in the present structure of the earth. The other theory, inferring from the appearance and situation of certain fossilised organic reliquiae, a much higher antiquity as to the origin of our planet, admits the creation of man, and perhaps of the animals which now surround him,* at the period commonly assigned, and even recog- nises the great diluvial event announced in the Bible; but it likewise assumes a progressive developement of organised existence, f and contends for a succession * It is a remarkable circumstance, and one which has been taken as cor- roborative of the hypothesis of the transcendant antiquity of certain deposits of the reliquiae of the simplest types of animal organization, that the remains of human beings are no where found embedded, even among the reliques ef the more perfect mammalia, until we come to the strata of comparatively recent origin. Skeletons of men, more or less mutilated, have been found in the West Indies, on the coast at G uadaloupe. One of these fossil skele- tons is in the British Museum, and another in the Royal Cabinet at Paris. The antiquity of these remains has given rise to some discussion: but the ablest geologists assign them to a modern era. The rock in which they are enclosed is known to be forming daily ; it consists of minute fragments of shells and corals, incrusted with a calcareous cement resembling travertin, and altogether not unlike the red conglomerate of the rock of Gibraltar, so full of the bones of apes, &c. While the absence of human remains in the older strata is admitted, it must not at the same time be forgotten, that those regions where the human family is believed to have originated, and over which its descendants first spread themselves, have been little explored bv geologists. This circumstance has been dwelt upon by Mr. Lyell, who has also adverted to the consideration that, as there is no reason why the bones of men should, under any circumstances, be less imperishable than those of quadrupeds, with which they are sometimes found well preserved in peaty, fluviatile, and other recent stations, " we do not despair of the discovery of such monuments, whenever those regions wliich have been peopled by man from the earliest ages, and which are at the same time the principal theatres of volcanic action, shall be examined by the joint skill of the antiquary and the geologist." Principles of Geology, ii. 265. f- The theory of progressive perfectability has been most ingeniously and indefatigably carried out by the celebrated French naturalist Lamarck, in his Zoological system. He remarks, that if we examine the whole series of known animals, from one extremity to the other, when they are arranged in the order of their natural relations, we find that we may pass progressively, or at least with very few interruptions, from beings of more simple to those of 24 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. of catastrophies by means of which the primitive forms have been overthrown and entombed many thousands of years before the advent of the first human pair. Of course, this theory requires us to concede, at least, that the first verses of the Mosaic account must bear a much looser interpretation than that which is usually given to them ; and it is mainly to the views taken as to the importance or non-im- portance of such concession, that we must attribute the animus of many of the discussions on either side. The question is confessedly important ; and even Werner himself, whose system is now chiefly recog- nised in Europe, is said, on the testimony of one of his distinguished disciples,* to have expressed him- self, " out of respect for the Sacred Scriptures," cau- more compound structure; and in proportion as the complexity of their organization increases, the number and dignity of their faculties increase also. Among plants a similar approximation to a graduated scale of being is apparent Referring to geological phenomena, he assumes that the pri- meval ocean invested our planet entirely, long after it became the habitation of living beings, and thus he was inclined to assert the priority of the types of marine animals to those of the terrestrial, and to fancy, for example, that the testacea of the ocean existed first, until some of them, by gradual evolu- tion, were " improved " into those inhabiting the land. " Accordingly, in conformity to these views, inert matter was supposed to have been first en- dowed with life ; until, in the course of ages, sensation was superadded to mere vitality; sight, hearing, and the other senses were afterwards required; and then instinct and the mental faculties, until finally, by virtue of the tendency of things to progressive improvement, the irrational was developed into the rational ; " in short, the ape became a man ! This hypothesis of the transmutation of species is clearly stated and ably exposed in the second volume of Lyell's Principles of Geology. Adverting to the almost entire absence of the remains of mammiferous quadrupeds in the more ancient formations, and particularly to the absence of all traces of " creation's lord," this delightful author adds, " The recent origin of man, and the absence of all signs of any rational being holding an analogous relation to former states of the animate world, affords one and the only reasonable argument in support of the hypothesis of a progressive scheme, but none whatever in favour of the fancied evolution of one species out of another." * D'Aubisson, torn, i., p. 369. ANTIQUITY OF MATTER. 25 tiously on the question of those deluges and revolu- tions of nature, which some of the German scholars of this great master have so boldly called to their aid in the solution of the difficulties they met with. The indefinite antiquity of the matter of our globe has not only been contended for by geologists : divines themselves have leaned to a similar opinion, as being not inconsistent with the Mosaic record : of this sentiment was the present Bishop of Chester.* M. Elie de Beaumont, a celebrated French geologist, supposes " that in the history of the earth there have been long periods of comparative repose, during which the deposition of sedimentary matter has gone on in regular continuity ; and there have also been short periods of paroxysmal violence during which that continuity was broken." The circumstances of some of these movements are hinted at ; among the rest, " the instantaneous upheaving of great mountain masses, which would cause a violent agitation in the waters of the sea ; and the rise of the Andes may, perhaps, have produced that transient deluge which is noticed among the traditions of so many nations." This hypothesis of successive revolutions, or " Geog- nostic epochs," as they are termed by Brongniart, is ably examined by Mr. Lyell, whose opinion is in * " According to that [the Mosaic] history, we are bound to admit that only one general destruction or revolution of the globe has taken place, since the period of that creation which Moses records, and of which Adam and Eve were the first inhabitants. The certainty of one event of that kind would appear from the discoveries of geologers, even if it were not declared by the sacred historian. But we are not called upon to deny the possible existence of previous worlds, from the wreck of which our globe was organ- ised, and the ruins of which are now furnishing matter to our curiosity. The belief of their existence is indeed consistent with rational probability, and somewhat confirmed by the discoveries of astronomers as to the plurality of worlds.'' Sumner's Records of the Creation, vol. i., p. 342. 4th Edition. 1825. 26 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. favour of the novel theory which accounts for all geological phenomena on the principle of a reiterated recurrence of minor convulsions, similar to those which still occasionally take place,* and their having acted through an inconceivably long period of time. Either of these schemes calls upon us for too implicit a cre- dence in the exclusion of reasonable causes and re- corded events. In reference to the latter theory, Mr. Conybeare justly remarks, that " historical records, and the very nature and physical possibilities of the case, alike compel us to dissent entirely from those crude and hasty speculations which would assign to the causes now in action, the power of producing any very material change in the face of things; and which would refer to these alone, acting under their present conditions, and with only their present forces, the mighty operations which have formed and modified onr continents."! In reference to Cuvier's theory of a succession of deluges, and after admitting that many of the phe- nomena of diluvial action taking place before our eyes may seem to favour such a notion, Mr. Jameson remarks, " What has just been said does not entitle us to admit that the various parts of the earth have been from time to time overflowed with water. Yet * To those who happen not to have seen Mr. Lyell's able work, it may be proper to mention, that, while it is what it professes to be " an attempt to explain the former changes of the earth's surface, by reference to causes now in operation," in opposition to the assumption of a series of convulsive cata- clysms, it, at the same time, challenges for the various changes adverted to, what will probably be as reluctantly conceded "an infinitesimal period;'' in other words, the author attempts to prove, " that the minor volcanoes on the flanks of Etna may, some of them, be more than 10,000 years old," and quotes with respect the opinion of a distinguished botanist, " that some living specimens of the Baobab tree of Africa, and the Taxodium of Mexico, may be 5,000 years old." f Geol. Eng. and Wales, p. xxxiii. CATACLYSMAL ERAS. 27 are there other appearances which completely indicate such a change, namely, beds of coal, and the fossil remains of land animals. The carbonisation of roots of trees in clefts of rocks, and of marsh plants in peat- bogs, which takes place, as it were, under our own immediate observation ; the transitions of bituminous wood into pitch-coal, the frequent presence of vegeta- bles partly converted into coal, in the neighbourhood of beds of coal, and which are more abundant the nearer they are to these beds; and, finally, the chemical nature of coal, which is similar to that of vegetables, go to prove the vegetable origin of the older and independent coal formation. " Though some fossil vegetables might derive their origin, by being floated to quarters more or less remote from their native soil, as we find to be the case in many islands of the South Seas, and on other shores ; on the other hand, neither the breadth and, extent of beds of coal, nor the erect position in wliich fossil trees and reed plants are not unfrequently found in their neighbourhood, coincide with such an explana- tion. The plants from which these beds were formed, once stood and grew in the place where they were buried ; and from these remains we infer that they were entirely land plants, tree-ferns, Lycopodia, and other cryptogamia. It also appears undeniable, that the land, being once dry, was, during a longer or shorter time, covered with luxuriant vegetation ; that it was afterwards overflowed with water, and then became dry land again. But was this overflow of water produced by a sudden, violent, and universal catastrophe, such as we consider the deluge ? Many circumstances leave room for opposite conjecture. If it is probable that the older or black coal is of vege- 28 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. table origin, the plants from which it has originated, must have suffered an incomparably greater change than those of more recent formations. Their compo- sition and their texture, afford evidence of a long operation of the fluid in which the changes were pro- duced ; and their situation proves that the substance of the plants, though not entirely dissolved, was yet much comminuted, and was kept floating and swim- ming, and then precipitated. How can we, in any other way, account for the layers of sand-stone and slate clay, with which coal regularly alternates, so that from one to sixty alternate beds have been enu- merated ? How can we explain the combination of mineral coal with slate clay, or account for the ap- pearance of bituminous shale, flinty slate, of iron pyrites andiron-ore, in the midst of mineral coal itself? We do not, however, admit of a repeated uncovering and covering of the land with water, and of a renewal of vegetation for every particular bed of coal ; far from it, for violent inundations exliibit very different phe- nomena. These formations, like pure mineral forma- tions, bear the evident impress of a lengthened ope- ration, and of gentle precipitations ; and whoever still entertains doubts regarding this, may have them com- pletely removed by the condition in which vegetable remains are frequently found in the coal formations, by the perfect preservation of the most delicately shaped fern leaves, by the upright position of stems, and by other appearances of a similar character. It is also an important objection against the universality of the covering of water, notwithstanding the wide extent of beds of coal, that they are sometimes accom- panied with fossil remains of fresh water shells, from which we are entitled to draw the conclusion, that CUVIER AND JAMESON. 29 they must have been deposited in enclosed basins of inland waters. From the beds of coal found in various situations among Alpine limestone, as well as in other secondary formations, under similar circumstances, we are at liberty to maintain that they are not indebted for their origin to any universal and sudden revo- lution.* " When we proceed to the second division of coal formations, to brown coal, or to lignite, the principal difference we discover is, that the change which the vegetables have undergone, having taken place at a time when the chemical power had lost much of its energy, was incomplete ; and besides, we observe in the different brown coal formations, the same repeti- tion of single beds alternating with other beds of rocks, the mixture of different minerals, and not un- frequently of upright stems. Some appear to be de- rived from sea plants, and others from fresh-water plants ; but the greater proportion from land plants, They, equally with the beds of black coal, give evi- dence of a new overflow of water, and the water plants themselves, which never thrive at a great depth, and which frequently appear under prodigious beds of rocks, must have experienced such a change. But that change was scarcely of the kind which we un- derstand by a deluge, and the frequent repetition of * Mr. Greenhough, in an address, delivered in 1834, before the Geological Society, of which he was President, avows his concurrence with the theory of Mr. Lyell, first, perhaps, promulgated by Dr. Fleming in 1825, which as- sumes the impossibility of detecting any irrefragable traces of what is usually termed "Noah's flood," and to which other geologists attribute so many striking phenomena. " The vast mass of evidence which he [Mr. Lyell] had brought together, in illustration of what may be called Diurnal Geology, convinces me, that if, five thousand years ago, a deluge did sweep over the entire globe, its traces can no longer be distinguished from more modern and local disturbances." 30 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. deluges, indicated, according to some, by the repeated beds of coal from the transition to the newest tertiary periods, is hardly credible. It may be maintained, with more certainty, of brown coal than of black coal, that they have been formed in land water, and hence, in limited and isolated basins, since fresh-water ani- mals are their constant attendants."* Thus far the opinions of the Scottish philosopher, whose authority on such a question is entitled to re- spectful consideration. Another writer, however, whose ingenious lucubrations have recently been given to the world in two pleasing volumes, boldly joins issue with the impugners of the common theory, and at once announces that the scriptural cosmogony as literally interpreted, and the phenomena of geology as actually developed, are precisely accordant and sylichronical. " By the sure guidance of the Sacred Record," says Granville Penn,-f "which satisfies every condition that actual observation can demand, we are able to deduce to their true chronological order the various effects or phenomena, which the mineral geo- logy arranges confusedly and anachronically, through neglect of the historical rule ; arbitrarily and fanci- fully creating facts and dates, by gratuitously multi- plying revolutions. For, let us examine, what gene- ral phenomena the mineral formations of the earth present, which may not be philosophically referred to one or other of the four obvious divisions of the Mo- saical geology, creative, fragmentary, sedimentary, and diluvial; which are correspondently adumbrated, * Cuvier's Essay on the Theory of the Earth, p. 425. Appendix by Jameson. f A Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaical Geologies. Vol. II. p. 69. MOSAICAL GEOLOGY. 31 but obscurely, and without any knowledge of causes, in tlie primitive, intermediary, secondary, and tertiary of the Mineral geology ; viz. 1. to the first formation or creation of the substance and general frame-work of the globe : or, 2. to the first revolution, which formed the basin of the primitive sea : or, 3. to the long period that succeeded, during which that sea was stationary in its primitive basin : or, 4. and lastly, to the second and last revolution, in which the sea was transfused into a new basin, leaving .the ' wreck and ruin,' of its former basin to constitute our present continents.* To the first of these," continues Mr. Penn, " are plainly to be referred the sensible cha- racters and diversities of all primitive formations, re- cognisable in the vast frame-work of the globe. To the second, are to be referred the universal characters of dislocation and subversion, of downfal and ruin, of fracture and dispersion of those formations ; of subsi- dences, in primordial valleys and plains ; of primitive * Philosophers have not been less puzzled in attempts to produce, to their satisfaction, the Noachian deluge, than geologists have been in their en- deavours to explain phenomena plainly indicative of diluvial action. Bur- net, brought the waters from below, through the broken crust with which he fancied they had been covered during the Ante-diluvian period, and with fragments of this crust he formed the mountains. Woodward suspended, for a time, all cohesion among the particles of earth, and reduced the globe to a soft paste ; while Whiston, not inferior in fancy to any of his predeces- sors, called a comet to his aid. Whatever may be thought of theories which assume a succession of cataclysms, or of those which, like that detailed in the text, make the most of a single revolution, certainly the hypothesis ap- parently the most strange, is that which denies that we have a right to expect to find any traces at all of the deluge of the Scriptures in post-dilu- vian times ! Yet such was the opinion put forth by Dr. Fleming, in an in- teresting article published in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal for 1825- 26: he contends that " the flood exhibited no violent impetuosity ;" hence he adds " with this conviction in my mind, I am not prepared to witness in na- ture any remaining marks of the catastrophe, and," he proceeds, " I feel my respect for the authority of revelation heightened, when I see on the present surface no memorials of the event." 32 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. volcanic eruption, fusion and transmutation : all which characters, mark the first period of change from the first perfect condition of the mineral sphere. To the third are plainly to be referred, the triturated cha- racter of all the fractured parts of those formations ; the sedimentary deposits of their comminuted particles, and the incorporation of the most ancient of these into their fragmentary base ; the accumulation of the questionable matter now constituting coal, and occu- pying generally this particular stage in the series of formations ; the many volcanoes now extinct., whose vestiges are found on the lower levels of the earth, and in mediterraneous regions, remote from the sea, and which are therefore extinct, because their former activity resulted from a communication with the waters which have been removed from them : to this long interval are also to be referred, the incredibly numerous assemblages of marine substances in com- pact soils, at levels far above the surface of the present ocean ; the failures of the shattered base, which have rendered inclined, and even vertical, so many of the earliest horizontal depositions ; and, lastly, the subse- quent accumulation of the latest and actual horizontal strata above those. To the fourth and last of these periods are to be referred, with equal evidence, the excavation of valleys of denudation in secondary or se- dimentary soils, leaving the lateral parts undisturbed ; the transport and aggeration of marine mineral masses ; the moulding of the superior soils on their irregular substrata, displaying the evidence of watery action as plainly, as a stuccoed surface displays evi- dence of the action of an artist's trowel ; the exposure, exsiccation, and induration of those masses now con- stituting the secondary order of mountains, hills, and CUVIER'S VIEW OF WERNER'S THEORY. 33 rocks ; also various peculiarities of form and disposi- tion, caused, from local circumstances, by the mass of waters in the progress of their retreat ; the superficial detritus, and colluvia of the sea-basin spread over all these ; and finally, the confused mixture of organic terrestrial fragments, animal and vegetable, previously constituting a part of the furniture of the perished earth, which are every where found in soils into which they were precipitated, whilst those soils formed the soft and yielding bottom of the retiring sea." Such, in brief, is the theory which, taking into account the discoveries of geologists, Mr. Penn, in his two interesting volumes, expounds in harmony with the sacred cosmogony.* The following passage in still fewer words, derived from Cuvier, will give a general idea of the system of Werner, the most celebrated among the continental geologists: A universal and tranquil ocean deposits, in great masses, the primitive rocks, those rocks which are distinctly chrystallized, and in which silica is the first predomi- nating ingredient. Granite forms the base on which all others rest. To granite succeeds gneiss, which is * Mr. Fairholme, in his work, entitled " A General View of the Geology of Scripture," agrees in the main with Mr. Penn. The basis of Mr. Fairholme'a theory is, that " all the present dry lands of the earth were formerly the bed of the antediluvian sea ;" and accordingly, that what are now the recep- tacles of coal strata, whether composed of sandstone or calcareous matter, have originally formed valleys or basins in the bed of the antediluvian sea, having received their contents while that sea was depositing the whole moveable matter of former continents, with which its waters must have been charged. In these deposits, large trees are sometimes found " detached from the great strata of coal, and extending from one stratum through a variety of others, which is sufficient proof," says Mr. Fairholme, " of these strata, at least, having all been formed at one period." In the assumed diluvial origin of our coal basins, it is contended that the great chalk formation formed at least one portion of the bed of the sea at the destructive period, and yet in the usually received opinions of geology, the chalk is placed far above the coal. 34 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. only a granite beginning to be slaty. By degrees, mica predominates. Slates of different kinds appear; but in proportion as the purity of the precipitation is changed, the distinctness of the chrystalliue grain is diminished. Serpentines, porphyries, and traps suc- ceed, in which this grain is still less distinct, although the siliceous nature of these rocks evinces the re- turning purity ot the deposition. Intestine agitations in the fluid destroy a part of these primary deposites : new rocks are formed from their debris united by a cement. It is amidst these .convulsions that living nature arises. Carbon, the first of these products, begins to shew itself. Coal, a mineral formed from vegetables, appears in vast quantities. Lime, which had already been associated with the primitive rocks, becomes more and more abundant. Rich collections of sea-salt, to be one day explored by man, fill im- mense cavities. The waters, again tranquillized, but having their contents changed, deposit beds less thick, and of greater variety, in which the remains of living bodies are successively accumulated, in an order not less fixed than that of the rocks which contain them. Finally, the last retreat of the waters diffuses over the land immense collections of alluvial matters, the first seats of vegetation, of cultivation, and of social life. The rents in the strata formed during these convulsions become filled with the rocks of various kinds, as granite, trap, &c., thus forming veins or dykes. The metals, like the rocks, have had their epochs and their successions. The last of the primi- tive, and the first of the secondary rocks, have received them in abundance. They become rare in countries of later formation. Commonly they are found in particular situations, in those -veins which seem to be TABULAR SERIES OF STRATA. 35 rents produced in the great rocky masses, and which liave been filled after their formation. But they are not all of equal age. Those which have been last formed are easily known, because their veins intersect those of the more ancient, and are not themselves intersected. Tin is the oldest of them all ; silver and copper are the latest formed. Gold and iron, those two masters of the world, seem to have been deposited in the bowels of the earth, at all the different epochs of its formation; but iron appears at each epoch under different forms, and we can assign the age of its dif- ferent ores. It can scarcely be necessary to remind the least attentive reader, any more than the most superficial observer, that the masses composing the crust of the earth are by no means found in regular concentric depositions, stratum-super-stratum, like the coats of an onion : on the contrary, they are found, as we shall afterwards more particularly notice, singularly dislo- cated and intermixed ; the beds placed at every angle with the horizon, from a parallel to a vertical position : the lowest, or most ancient deposites being in some instances elevated above the newest alluvial soil, as in the case of Dartmoor, in Devonshire ; many parts of Cornwall ; the well-known granitic mass of Mount Sorrel, in Leicestershire ; and the Grampians of Scotland. The following tabular series, proposed by Cony- beare and Pliillips, as divided into five comprehensive classes, will exhibit at one view the general succession of strata, and the principle of the Wemerian arrange- ment : the names in the second column are proposed by these gentlemen : D 2 36 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. Character. Modern Names. Wernerian Names. Former Name*-. 1. Formations (chiefly of sand and clay) above the chalk. Superior Order. Newest Floetz Class. Tertiary Class. 2. Comprising a. Chalk. b. Sands and clays beneath the chalk, c. Calcareous freestones (oolites) and argillace- ous beds. d. New red sandstone, con- glomerate and magne- sian limestone. Super-medial Order. Floetz Class. Secondary Class. 3. Carboniferous Rocks, com- prising a. Coal measures. b. Carboniferous limestone. c. Old red sandstone. Medial Order. Sometimes referred to the prece- dingsometimes to the succeed- ing class, by writers of these schools ; very often the coal measures are referred to the for- and sandstone to the latter. 4. Roofing slate, &c. &c. Submedial Order. Transition Class. Intermediate Class. 5. Mica slate. Gneiss. Granite, &.c_ Inferior Order. Primitive Class. Primitive Class. ID all these formations, from the lowest to the highest, we find a repetition of roeks and beds of similar chemical composition, i. e. siliceous, argillaceous, and calcareous, but with considerable difference in tex- ture ; those in the lowest formations being compact and often crystalline, while those in the highest and most recent are loose and earthy. Although the five comprehensive classes foregoing, will serve to exhibit a general view of the great outlines of Modern Geo- logy, we no sooner begin to trace in detail the suc- cession of mineral beds, than their numbers and vari- ety appear to be endless, and but for some classifica- tion would be infinitely perplexing to the student. But by grouping together individual strata in a natu- ral and easy manner, we reduce them to a limited number of series, each series comprehending mime- REPETITIONS OF STRATA. 37 rous individual strata naturally allied and associated together. To explain tin's by an example : if Der- byshire be the country under examination, the inves- tigator will find a series of twenty or more alternations of beds of coal, sandstone, and slaty clay, repeated over and over; and beneath these beds a like alter- nation of limestone strata, with beds of the rock called toadstone. Here, then, all the individual beds at once resolve themselves into two comprehensive se- ries the upper containing coal, the lower limestone ; each series being characterised by the repetition of its own peculiar members : such series are called Form- ations.* In some parts of the great northern coal- field, the workable seams, which as to the mass of them are spoken of as above the encrinal limestone, are sometimes interstratified therewith : at the same time, in certain other situations, the regular coal measures extend, as we shall afterwards find, under the magnesian limestone : where this is the case, some of the seams appear to have suffered deteriora- tion. Extensive collieries, however, are established upon, and shafts sunk through the limestone, in places where it is fifty yards in thickness. The mining district of Alston Moor, &c., westward from Newcas- tle, consists of an immense floor of limestone, rich in veins of lead ore, and masses of winch have occasion- ally been cut through in sinking the coalpits. It may be briefly added in this place, that the fossil substances more particularly alluded to in the present volume, as being more or less available for the pur- poses of fuel, may be enumerated in the descending * Rev. W. D. Conybeare. Introduce. Geology of England and Wales. Part I., p. v. 38 GEOLOGICAL THEORIES. order of the series as follow : 1. peat; 2. lignites; 3. bituminous coal ; 4. anthracite. To each of these substances or rather suits of substances, for each comprehends numerous varieties modern science, as already intimated, attributes a vegetable origin ; unless, indeed, we except the last in wliich case, as we shall find, the exception will have to encounter strong evidence against its admission. The latter three bituminous fuels above named, seem to bear a striking relation in the gradual change which, in each case, the ligneous structure has undergone, to the geological newness or antiquity of the strata amidst which they commonly occur. The carboniferous group or true coal measures, in which the vegetable origin of the beds, however undoubted, is by no means obvious, are comprehended, according to the prece- ding scale, in the medial order ; above which, we have the lignites, where woody structure is very apparent, and sometimes but little changed ; while below, even in the primary rocks themselves, we find anthracite, in wliich every trace of organic structure is commonly obliterated.* Nearly all the rocks lying above those termed primitive more properly, primary contain animal remains : the generally striking character and occasional profusion of these, give to the fossiliferous strata a peculiar interest, not only in the eyes of a student in natural philosophy, but to the casual ob- server : they are likewise of vast importance in aiding * Professor Jameson considered what he calls " glance coal " and " black coal," to be original chemical deposits, " as little connected with vegetable remains, as the shells that occur in limestone, are with that rock." His rea- sons were, that these coals occur in primitive rocks as gneiss, mica slate, clay slate, &c., and appear to be contemporaneous formations. More recent and extended investigation, however, does not seem to lend confirmation to such an opinion. FOSSILIFEROUS STRATA. 39 us in the identification of remote formations. The beautiful principle that every distinct geological de- posit had its appropriate suite of fossils, was first pro- mulgated by Mr. W. Smith, who may justly be styled the Father of Modern Geology. The formation of the Geological Society in 1807, the object of which was rather to collect and publish facts than to pro- pound or support theories, has been vastly contribu- tive to the diffusion of an interest in this study through the most intelligent classes _of the commu- nity. CHAPTER III. PEAT. Early use of Peat for Fuel Its abundance in various countries Hypothesis of the discovery of its in- flammable nature -Notices of the knowledge and application of Peat in ancient times Theories of the origin of Turf deposits Various opinions and testimonials concerning the bituminization of Vege- table Matter Plants which chiefly enter into the composition of Peat bogs Irish and Scotch bog mosses Extraneous remains found in Peat bogs Analogy between the depositions of some stratified turbaries and the Coal formation Method of dig- ging and preparing Peat in Ireland Varieties of Peat Old practice of charring Turf Popular prejudices in favour of Peat Fuel. _L HE most common article of domestic firing in the less wooded districts of this country, previously to the general use of pit coal, was turf or peat, a species of fuel still dug and burnt in large quantities in those places where it abounds, and where wood or coal are scarce or unattainable. It would be difficult to say at what period the material now under consi- deration was first applied to its long-acknowledged IMPORTANCE OF PEAT. 41 useful purpose . that it was used, as it is at present, from a very early period of our history, there can be no doubt : and, in the absence of ligneous and mi- neral fuels especially, its great abundance, easy ob- tainment, and singular production, arrest attention to one of those sources of comfort and convenience, wliich an infinitely wise Providence has opened in the store-house of Nature for the benefit of mankind. Peat claims some notice in a work like this, not only because that, in common with wood, it was an early, and still continues to be an article of extensive domes- tic consumption as fuel ; but also, and more especially, because that, like coal, it may be regarded in some sort as a fossil, being dug out of the earth : it has even been considered, erroneously perhaps, to exhibit the progress of transformation from the living vegetable fibre to the compact lignite or jet : indeed, Mr. Wil- liams, a respectable mineralogical writer, supposed that antediluvian peat bogs have been sources of fossil coal; an opinion wliich has not wanted the countenance of much higher authority. It has been supposed that the discovery that vari- ous kinds of earth, or peat, might be used as fuel, would originate in accident in some place destitute of wood ; as, not only may the heat of the sun, after long drought, occasion combustion,* but a spark, falling fortuitously on a turf moor, during a dry summer, often sets it on fire, and the conflagration it occasions generally lasts so long, that it cannot es- cape notice. Tacitus mentions a notable instance of * Instances of this are not wanting in our day. The heat was so great during the autumn of 1833, that the ground in some places spontaneously took fire, especially in Switzerland : and in the summer of the present year (1834), a moor took fire owing to the long-continued drought, in Livonin. 42 PEAT. this kind, which occurred in the neighbourhood of Cologne, not long after the foundation of that city. In Siberia, about the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, a village, on account of its marshy situation, was removed to another place, and the remains, that they might be the more easily earned away, were set on fire. The flames having communicated to the soil, which was inflammable, occasioned great de- vastation ; and when Gmelin was there, it had been burning for half a year.* It seems, however, scarcely necessary to have re- course to such an hypothesis for suggesting the use of peat as an economical fuel ; the presence and appear- ance of the substance itself, must at once have led to its* application as a fuel by those who had previously witnessed vegetable matter of any kind in a state of combustion. Certainly, its value for this purpose was very early understood in Germany ; for Pliny says expressly, that the Chauci pressed together with their hands a kind of mossy earth, which they dried by the wind rather than by the sun, and which they used not only for cooking their victuals, but also for warming their bodies.f The earliest certain account of turf in the middle ages, which Beckmann had met with, was a letter of sanction, by which an Abbot Ludolph, in the year 1113, permitted a nunnery near Utrecht to dig cespites for its own use, in a part of his vena. Now, there can be no doubt that vena signifies a turf-bog, and cespite turf. On the same authority, we are told that the words turba, turbo, turba ad focum, turf a, occur for turf in the years 1 190, 1 191, 1201, and 1210. The traffic in this kind * Beckmann's Hist. Inventions. I. 33o. f Hist. Nat. Lib. XVI. c. 1. NOTICES OF ANCIENT TURBARIES. 43 of fuel is recognised in the Leges Burgorum of Scot- land, so early as about 1140. Turbaria, for a turf- moor, is found in Matthew Paris, who died in 1259 ; turbagmm, in a diploma of Philip the Fair, in the year 1308, signifies the right of digging turf, as turbare does to dig up turf. Brito, who lived about 1223, is quoted as describing the productions of Flanders, as including arida gleba foco siccus incisa marescis, the latter words of which are understood to signify turf- bog. It may be added that turbary, or s.ome cognate word, frequently occurs in the earlier foundation charters of the monasteries in this country, as con- veying the right to dig turf generally within a certain limited extent of ground. The natural history of peat has puzzled enquirers a good deal ; and explanations of its origin, hardly less discordant than those recorded on the subject of fossil coal, have been entertained and defended. For in- tance, it was supposed by one author, to have had an origin coeval with the hills or the valleys in which it is formed; by another, to have been a bituminous deposite of the sea ; by a third, the wreck of once- floating islands ; and by Pliny and others, to have had an entirely mineral origin. The fact that theories like these should have been taken up by modern writers, is the more remarkable, when it is recollected that peat-bogs, or mosses, not only lie so immediately commodious for inspection, as that their growth and transformation may be said to take place before our eyes ; but, from the various animal and vegetable remains, and even works of art, which have been occasionally discovered embedded therein, their recent formation, as compared with the coal strata, is ren- 44 PEAT. dered indisputable.* Dr. Anderson, as well as Dr. Plott, entertained the opinion that peat, as we find it in its natural state, is of itself a vegetable production, not a congeries of dead plants preserved by some mystical influence, as had been generally supposed, but actually alive, and in the highest degree of per- fection of which it ever is susceptible. In its analy- sis, recent qualities, decomposition, and final decay, every circumstance, in the opinion of Dr. Anderson, tends to point it out as a recent vegetable substance, possessing certain properties of fresh vegetables, par- ticularly that of inflammability, in a high degree of perfection. Its appearance, he admits, is indeed very unlike to those vegetable substances we have been used to observe, and more nearly resembles a mass of putrid vegetable matters than a real living sub- stance, f Mr. Parkinson objects altogether to the notion of deriving our peat-bogs from the germination and increment of a peculiar kind of moss. " Did peat," says he, " owe its formation to the supposed nioss- plant, we should not expect to find it, as it often is * The time required for the production of a given depth, has been a sub- ject of frequent inquiry. In some cases, its growth has been so rapid as to be sensible to the observation of individuals, but, in general, it has been necessary to have recourse to evidence founded on circumstances involving a much longer period than human life. It has been remarked on the con- tinent of Europe, that cavities of seven feet in depth have been filled with it in the short space of thirty years. And peat mosses have formed over certain fallen forests in Scotland, within fifty or sixty years : but we are not told to what thickness. Roman roads, utensils, and coins, have been found buried seven feet under mosses in this country : and only a few years ago, the palings of a park, described by Camden, were discovered beneath Chat Moss, in Lancashire. Vide an elaborate article on Peat, by Dr. Mac Culloch, in Edin. Phil. Journal. 1820. vol. ii. ;/. 40. f In Holland, submarine peat is derived from fucij and on parts of our own coast from Zostera marina, Lyell. ORIGIN OF PEAT-BOGS. 45 found, almost entirely composed of other species of vegetable matter. Indeed, that which is here sup- posed to have originated in one particular mode of vegetation, appears to depend on a certain change which affects vegetable matter in general ; but per- haps some parts of the vegetable creation more than others. Tims the conferva and the mosses, and par- ticularly the sphagnum palustre, appear to be vegeta- bles which are peculiarly calculated to suffer a con- version into this kind of substance. The promptitude with winch the species of plants just enumerated appear to submit to their change, and their disposi- tion extensively to spread themselves, through every interstice of such peat-bogs as they have possessed themselves of, may perhaps account, in a great mea- sure, for that augmentation of peat mosses, which the Doctor [Anderson] says can have happened in no other way than by its increase in the manner of growing vegetables from the time of its first genera- tion to the present hour."* To prove that this augmentation is not of growing peat, but of vegetable matters under the influence of the common laws of vegetation, and at the same time to point out more clearly what appeared to be the actual circumstance which seemed to corroborate Dr. Anderson's opinion, Mr. Parkinson adduces an ac- count of the process as delivered by an eye-witness. Dr. King, in a paper presented many years ago to the Dublin Society, says, that " Ireland doth abound in moss more than, I believe, any kingdom, insomuch that it is very troublesome, being apt to spoil fruit trees and quicksets. This moss is of divers kinds : * Organic Remains, TO!, i. p. 203. 46 PEAT. that which grows in bogs is remarkable ; your light spongy ground is nothing but a congeries of the threads of this moss, before it is sufficiently rotten, (and then the turf looks white, and is light). I have seen it in such quantities, and so tough, that the turf spades would not cut it : in the north of Ireland, they, by w r ay of joke, call it old wife's tow, and curse her that buried it, when it hinders them in cutting the turf : it is not much unlike flax : the turf holes in time grow up with it again, and all the little gutters in bogs are generally filled with it." The process by which the substance of peat is formed from these vegetables, Parkinson considers as " a bituminous fermentation peculiar to vegetable matter placed in Fig.l such situations, as not only exclude the external air, and secure the presence of mois- ture, but prevent the escape of the more volatile principles, and which terminates in the formation of those substances termed bituminous." It is now well known that turf, in general, consists of a congeries of the roots and fibres of about forty differ- ent species of plants, chiefly mosses, amongst which the Sphagnum Palustre of Lin- naeus, (S. Latifolium. Eng. Bot.) represented in the mar- gin (jig. \ .), largely predomi- nates. In addition to heath and fern usually growing on COMPOSITION OF PEAT. 47 turf moors, we commonly meet with the myrica gale, or Dutch myrtle, and one or more species of cotton grass (Eriophorum), with its beautiful white tuft. Mr. Hunter, speaking of the turf moors on Hat- field Chace, comprising thousands of acres, from whence a great part of Yorkshire was for ages sup- plied with fuel, observes, that when the turf is re- moved, a natural mould is discovered, like that of the surrounding country ; " and a native of these regions, who had often watched the labourers on the moors, avers that he has seen the land beneath the turf lying in rig and furrow ; as if, before the turf collected upon it, it had been submitted to the higher opera- tions of husbandry."* In some parts of Aberdeenshire, Dr. Anderson in- forms us, there is found a certain kind of peat-moss, which when formed into peats in the common way, the latter are found to be more tender and brittle than usual, so as to break down during the process of drying, into irregular lumps called clods. When one of these clods is thrown into the fire, it soon kindles, and burns with a clear bright flame, much resem- bling that which would be produced by a lump of tal- low or butter in the same circumstances : these are therefore called creeshy, i. e. greasy clods, though they discover no degree of unctuosity to the sight, smell, or feel. These lumps, which are not common, are used as we use chips of wood, for kindling or reviving the fire. Professor Jameson states, that in some of the peat mosses in Scotland, the curious substance called mineral tallow has been found ; and as it is now known to chemists that the muscular parts of animals * South Yorkshire, vol. i. p. 154. 48 PEAT. after having been buried some time where water could have access to them, are changed into a fatty sub- stance resembling spermaceti and called adipocire, it has been conjectured that the unctuosity of this peat and the mineral tallow are indebted for their exist- ence to animals that have been buried in the bogs ; in which situations indeed the more solid proofs of such occurrences are often found. Besides, it is now well known that many of these vast mosses occupy the sites of forests that have perished within the historic period the causes which have led to this destruction are various : but in many places, besides the record or tradition of the fact, not only are prostrate trees, but upright rooted stems found abundantly embedded in the accumulated vegetable matter of the bog. Some of the largest trees known in this country, and well adapted for the masts and keels of vessels have been discovered in such situations. Mr. Hunter informs us that in the bogs about Hatfield, " firs have been found thirty yards in length, and oaks twenty-five and thirty-five yards : trees of other species are found, as the ash, birch, yew, and willow ; but the fir is the most abundant : large quantities of fir cones and hazel nuts are discovered." One of the most interesting facts in the liis- tory of peat, is its containing powerful antiseptic properties, by which animal substances are preserved entire for a great number of years. Many such in- stances are on record. In June 1747, the body of a woman was found six feet deep in a peat-moor in the Isle of Axholm, in Lincolnshire. The antique san- dals on her feet afforded evidence of her having been buried there for many ages ; yet her nails, hair, and skin are described as having shown hardly any marks BODIES PRESERVED IN PEAT. 49 of decay. A pair of sandals taken from the feet of a body so found in the time of Elizabeth, were long hung up in one of the churches in this country, as having belonged to an antediluvian. The vast antlers, and even the entire skeleton, of the gigantic elk (cer- vus elephas,) now extinct, sometimes occur in the Irish bogs ; as do also the remains of man. In a turbary on the estate of the Earl of Moira, in Ireland, a hu- man body was dug up, a foot deep in gravel, covered with eleven feet of moss ; the body was - completely clothed, and the garments seemed all to be made of hair. Before the use of wood was known in that country, the clothing of the inhabitants was made of hair, so that it would appear that tliis body had been buried in that early period ; yet it was fresh and un- impaired. In the Philosophical Transactions we find an example recorded of the bodies of two persons having been buried in moist peat, in Derby shire, in 1674, about a yard deep, which were examined twenty-eight years and nine months afterwards ; "the colour of their skin was fail- and natural, their flesh soft as that of persons newly dead." If we could regard, as some have done, peat, jet, and coal as different stages of the same transmutation of organized matter, the present chapter would be en- titled to its place in this volume, not only because it treats of the most obvious and ancient species of ex- humated fuel, but also as exhibiting the actual com- mencement of the coal series. Mr. Conybeare, speaking of peat as an alluvial deposite, and as be- longing to an order of causes still in action, thus de- scribes the changes which he imagines it may un- dergo : " the upper parts of its mass present the fibres 50 PEAT. of the vegetables whence it originates, and which still cover its surface (principally sphagnum palustre) in an almost unchanged state ; in the middle part the texture is gradually obliterated, and the mass passes into a compact peat ; in the lowest portion this change is carried still further, and substances very analagous to jet are found : in some instances beds of peat al- ternate with beds of mud or sand, or even shells and marie, deposited in lakes ; or of silt and sand formed in the aestuaries of rivers ; in these cases they appear exactly to represent an imperfect and unmatured coal- formation."* This analogy to the proper carboni- ferous strata, is still more strikingly exemplified by the well-known fact that some of these mosses con- tain metallic oxides in considerable quantity : bog iron-ore is not unknown to the smelter. It occurs in large rusty-looking masses, being deposited by the flowing of chalybeate water highly impregnated. Copper is likewise found in a similar state, particu- larly in the county of Cork, where the particles are so abundant that, in the year 1812, from a cupriferous peat-bog, on the east side of Glendore harbour, forty or fifty tons of the dried peat produced, when burnt, one ton of ashes, containing from ten to fifteen per cent of copper. But to advert for a moment to the passage above cited : notwithstanding the assertion not disputed as to the fact, that " substances ana- lagous to jet are found" in the peat, and some allu- sion to the experiments of Dr. Mac Culloch, intended to shew that the agency of fire applied to beds of lig- nite and peat, may convert, not wood, but vegetable matter previously bituminized into coal, it does not * Geology, &<. Tart I. p. 328. STRATIFIED AND METALLIFEROUS PEAT. 51 appear that Mr. Conybeare is fairly obnoxious to the following strong censure of a Continental writer quoted by Mr. Granville Penn : " I shall not stop to examine the different opinions that have been pro- pounded on the origin of coal ; I shall only notice one, which is not without a specious appearance. It is by some supposed that the three great fossil com- bustibles, coal, lignites, and peat, pass from one into the other by an effect of successive elaboration, which is continually proceeding ; so that, in the, course of elaboration, our peat-beds would become coal-beds. This idea could only enter the mind of one who is ignorant that nature has fixed in the formation of these substances a line of demarkation which sepa- rates them irrevocably." * Mr. Penn, after quoting the foregoing passage, inquires, with reference to a theory presently to be noticed, whether lignites bi- tuminised fossil wood may not have resulted from terrestrial vegetation, forests of the perished earth floated and sunk, during the great diluvial catastrophe, witliin those marine soils whose native vegetation is now transformed into coal ? To this, it might be said in reply, that if all other conditions were found con- curring in favour of the notion that our beds of bitu- minous coal have been deposited by the subsidence of vegetable matter floated from an immense distance by means of some diluvial catastrophe, there exist modern phenomena by no means unfavourable to such an hypothesis. At all events, vast depositions of lig- nite are constantly taking place from this cause in some northern latitudes. We are told, on good au- thority, that tropical plants are taken up by the great D'Aubuisson, torn. ii. p. 301. E 2 52 PEAT. current flowing out of the Gulf of Mexico, and car- ried in a northerly direction, till they reach the shores of Iceland and Spitzbergen uninjured, except in having commonly suffered complete decortication. " The banks of the Mackenzie river display," says Mr. Lyell,* " almost every where, horizontal beds of wood coal, alternating with bituminous clay, gravel, sand, and friable sandstone ; sections, in short, of such deposits as are now evidently forming at the bottom of the lakes which it traverses. Notwithstanding the vast forests intercepted by the lakes, a still greater mass of drift wood is found where the Mackenzie reaches the sea, in a latitude where no wood grows at present, except a few stunted willows. At the mouths of the river, the alluvial water has formed a barrier of islands and shoals, where we may expect a great formation of coal at some distant period." But to return to peat it has seldom, if ever been discovered within the tropics, and it rarely occurs in the valleys even in the south of France or Spain. It abounds more and more in proportion as we advance farther from the equator, and becomes not only more frequent but more inflammable in northern latitudes. f The use of peat as an economical fuel, is, as already mentioned, very general in those parts of the United Kingdom where it abounds but more particularly in Scotland and Ireland, one-tenth of the latter being reckoned to be covered with bog matter. Where it exists plentifully in England, it is sometimes burnt, either in admixture with coal itself, or as a cheaper substitute ; and so far is it from being altogether ex- cluded in those counties most noted for coal, that even * Geology, ii. 249. f Rev. Dr. Rennie on Peat, p. 260. DIGGING AND DRYING PEAT. 53 in Northumberland as well as Yorkshire considerable quantities of peat firing are expended. It is scarcely possible to pass in the Summer season especially, through those parts of Ireland which are remote from the capital and the larger towns, without witnessing somewhere or other, the operations of the turf-diggers. The turf-spade, in shape is not unlike that used by gardeners in general; but is lighter and narrower. With this implement, the workman first cuts away, in a sort of large cubical sods, the superior turfy stratum of the bog : as this is comparatively loose and light, it is presently dried and ready for use. On digging lower, the substance of the peat becomes more moist and compact, and appears more like rotten wood than the roots of moss ; it has, however, a sufficient degree of fibrous con- nexion to admit of its being readily raised in masses somewhat resembling large bricks. These quadran- gular clods, which the digger cuts out and throws up with great dexterity, are heaped in small stacks to dry ; after which, they are either used on the spot, or carted away by purchasers, according to circumstances to preserve them through the Winter, the piles are sometimes thatched. On sinking still lower in the bog, the matter becomes less solid, loses its coherency, and assumes the consistency of black sludge ; this is laded out with a scoop, similar to that used by brick- makers for wetting their clay, and is thrown upon a smooth floor or bottom, where, from exposure to the air, it stiffens and consolidates; it is then cut and cross-cut with the spade into cubic masses which, on becoming dry, are found to burn with great freedom, in consequence of the bituminous saturation, to which the matter of them seems to have been subjected. 54 PEAT. The accumulations of peat differ considerably in area, depth, and quality. On the banks of the Shan- non, one of the moss tracts is stated to be about fifty miles in length, by two or three miles in breadth. In mountainous situations the depth of the bed is seldom above three feet rarely so much : in bogs and low grounds, into which alluvial peat is " drifted," it is sometimes found forty feet thick though fully one-half of this volume is water.* The quality of peat varies according to the different situations where it is formed; as those places differ in drainage; in the nature of the vegetables they produce ; and in the kind and quantity of alluvium deposited among the dead vege- table matter. The conditions of purity, compactness and weight, are required in those kinds winch have been sometimes estimated as equal to inferior coals. Dr. Mac Culloch [ considers peat as presenting five obvious varieties, depending upon situation, viz., mountain peat, marsh peat, lake peat, forest peat, and marine peat : he likewise gives lists of such bog and other plants as he conceives enter most largely into the composition of each kind. As a fuel, however, Mr. TredgoldJ appears to consider it sufficient to di- vide peat into two kinds only the first, that which is compact and heavy, of a brownish black colour, and with scarcely any vestiges of its vegetable origin * Inundations of fluid peat have occasionally taken place to a considera- ble extent. In most of the instances recorded, the hogs have become so saturated with moisture, that, lying aslope above some subjacent level, they have slid or flowed down. A notable instance of this sort was the irruption of a part of the Solway Moss, which at the time [1772] consisted of 1300 acres very deep and tender: a part of this mass, on being deluged with rain, flowed from its ancient bed, and covered 300 acres of the adjoining land, to a depth of 30 feet. Phil. Trans, vol. xiii. p. 305. Abridgment. t Edin. Phil. Journal. Vol. ii. p. 40. | Tredgold on Warm, and Vent. Buildings, p. 44. VARIETIES, AND CHARRING. 55 remaining ; this is the best kind : the second is light and spongy, of a brown colour, and seems to be a mass of dead plants and roots which have under- gone little change ; it inflames readily and is quickly consumed. It must be remarked, however, that so highly imflammable are some even of the denser kinds, that the characteristic distinctions of bitummised wood are considered insufficient to explain the cir- cumstance and hence, the Ince peat of Lancashire is believed to be penetrated by petroleum derived from some bituminous spring. According to the authority above named, the weight of a cubic foot of peat, varies from 44lbs. to 701bs.; the denser variety affording about 40 per cent, of charcoal. Sir H. Davy has stated that in general, one hundred parts of dry peat contain from 60 to 99 parts of matter destructible by fire, and the residuum consists of earths, usually of the same kinds as the substratum, as clay, marl, lime, &c. The practice of charring turf obtained at an early period, especially in Germany where it was much used : it is said to have been employed in this state at the Freyberg smelting houses about the year 1560, though the undertaking, Beckmann assures us, was not attended with success. In some parts of Bohe- mia, Silesia, Upper Saxony and other places, as we learn from the same authority, it is common to subject the turf used in working metals, to a certain degree of combustion in kilns or furnaces ; after undergoing this process, it is considered that it kindles sooner, burns with less air, and forms a more moderate and uniform fire. Attempts to substitute peat treated as above, for charcoal in some of the smelting establish- ments of this country, were not unknown during the earlier part of the seventeenth century. And at this 56 PEAT. day, a description of peat called in some parts of De- vonslure " Blackwood," is, when cut, dried and char- red, used by the smiths in tempering edge-tools. " Turf," says an Irish writer, Dr. King,* " is ac- counted a tolerably sweet fire ; and having very im- politically destroyed our wood, and not as yet found stone coal, except in a few places, we could hardly live without some bogs ; when the turf is charred, it serves to work iron, and even to make it in a bloom- ery or ironwork ; turf charred, I reckon the sweetest and wholesoinest fire that can be ; fitter for a cham- ber, and for consumptive people, than either wood, stone coal, or charcoal." Notwithstanding tins truly Irish eulogy of the national bog fuel, one of the strongest objections to the use of peat for domestic fires is the disagreeable odour it emits while burning. But in tliis, as in many other instances, we are re- minded of the adage de yustibus nil disputandum ; for Mr. London, in his interesting Encyclopaedia of Cottage, Farm, and Villa Architecture, mentions that, in most parts of the Highlands of Scotland, peat fuel is so abundant, and the people so attached to peat smoke, that when new houses, built with stone and lime, with chimneys to cany off the smoke, were introduced on the Marquis of Stafford's estates, many of the farmers refused to live in them ; and it took years, before others could be reconciled to the clean and cold appearance which they alleged was produced by the want of smoke. * Phil. Trans. Vol. xv. Abridgment. 16&5. CHAPTER IV. NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. Nature and origin of Coal Different opinions which have been entertained on that subject Hypothetical queries answered Inferences and illustrations of the vegetable origin of Coal Chemical investigations of Mr. Hatchett Three conditions of Fossil Fuel ; submerged forests, lignites or bituminized wood, and true Coal Description of the Bovey Coal forma- tion Supposed state of the atmosphere at the period when the Coal Vegetables flourisJied Remarks on the prodigious supply of materials Forests and drift wood Have the vegetable matters forming the Coal strata been floated from a distance, or did they originally grow in situations near to those places where, in their changed condition, they are now found 2- Causes which may have operated in effect" ing the bituminization of the Coal plants Opinions of Mr. Penn and others Supposed peaty origin of Coal Anthracite. OF the formations or suites of strata already briefly described towards the close of Chapter II., that con- taining the carbonaceous deposits is the most inter- esting : its age and composition, involve problems 58 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. which engage the researches and excite the specula- tions, not of the mineral geologist only, but also of persons addicted to the study of pure mineralogy and chemistry. Numerous treatises have at different times been devoted directly or incidentally to disqui- sitions upon the nature and origin of coal ; and, as might be expected, the most conflicting and even contradictory conclusions have been come to on the subject. Mr. Hatchett,* enumerates as follows, the different opinions which have been propounded with respect to the origin of this substance of these, Mr. Penn says, " the first three are chemical and scientific; the fourth is altogether speculative and imaginary, and pertains exclusively to the mineral geology" : I. That pit-coal is an earth or stone chiefly of the argillaceous genus, penetrated and impregnated with bitumen. But Mr. Kirwan long ago, very justly remarked, that the insufficiency of tlu's solution is de- monstrated by Kilkenny and other coals, which are devoid of bitumen, and also that the quantity of earthy or stony matter in the most bituminous coals bears no proportion to them. II. The most prevailing opinion is, that mineral coal is of vegetable origin : that the vegetable bodies have, subsequently to their being buried under vast strata of earth, been mineralized by some unknown process, of which sulphuric acid has probably been the principal agent, and that by means of this acid, the oils of the different species of wood have been converted into bitumen, and a coaly substance has been formed. III. The opinion of Arduino is most singular : he * Philosophical Transactions, 1806. VARIOUS OPINIONS AND QUERIES. 59 conceives coal to be entirely of marine formation, and to have originated from the fat and unctuous matter of the numerous tribes of animals that once inhabited the ocean. IV. Mr. Kirwan considered coal and bitumen to have been derived from, what he designates, " the primordial chaotic fluid." Could we imagine a person, acquainted with the methods of modern physical investigation, to hear the enquiry relative to the vegetable origin of our coal fields started for the first time, it may be supposed he would naturally think of propounding a series of questions something like the following : 1. Is coal, when subjected to chemical analysis, found to yield products analagous to those derived by similar processes from ligneous matters ? 2. Have any experiments been instituted by which the conversion of wood into matter resembling coal has been effected ? 3. Do there any where exist in situ, masses of matter exhibiting on a large scale, the actual stages or progress of such a transmutation as that assumed by geologists i. e. depositions presenting the dis- tinct transition characteristics, comprehending un- doubted woody fibre in the superior, or upper or newer beds, and of true mineral coal in the inferior or lower, or more ancient strata ? 4. Do the coal strata present any organic remains or other phenomena indicative of vegetable origin ? To every one of these queries a distinct answer in the affirmative might be given ; nevertheless, the enquiry developes collaterally so many anomalous phenomena, that the application of facts tending to establish a conclusion at which Mr. Hatchett, and 60 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. recent geological writers in general have arrived ; namely that the theory which regards vegetable substances as the principal origin of coal, much the most probable, because it is corroborated by the greater number of geological facts, as well as by many experimental results, has by no means been unincumberecl with difficulties. It has, indeed, been justly remarked, that until lately the vegetable origin of coal has, in the more perfectly fossilised varieties, been rather inferred than demonstrated. Peat, we know, from actual observation, to consist of decayed vegetables. The process is going on under our eyes : we can watch its progress, distinguish its degrees, and observe its results. The lignites of the upper depo- sits are so analagous to peat, and so decidedly present traces of woody tissue, that we can have no reasonable doubts respecting their origin. Bovey coal is evi- dently dicotyledonous wood partially altered. In the coal beds of the lower formations, however, we cease to recognise decided appearances of vegetable matter, and in several varieties the texture is so compact or crystalline, that were analogy inapplicable, they could not be considered as organic. This is more especially the case with glance coal, as also with the variety called pitch coal. The foregoing are the sentiments of Mr. Witham, who, in his work on Fossil Vegeta- bles, has delineated beautiful sections of jet, lignites, and even the cannel coal of Lancashire, in all of which the traces of organization are decided though some of these, as the Bovey coal for instance, where the woody character is strikingly obvious exteriorly, and in the grain viewed generally, did not present those interesting appearances under the microscope, which might have been expected. HATCHETT'S INVESTIGATIONS. 61 Chemical investigation, already adverted to, al- though pursued by several able experimentalists, and in its results developing much curious illustration, has perhaps been the least conclusive in its bearings upon the question of the ligneous origin of mineral coal. Mr. Hatchett, however, not only obtained from coal a substance possessing properties analagous to those be- longing to that extractive principle of several vegeta- bles, especially oak bark, called tannin, but likewise resin, a product which has always been attributed to organized bodies, particularly to those of the vegetable kingdom ; and which does not appear to have been obtained from coal previously to the experiments of the above-named individual. Mr. Hatchett, in his various experiments, found it easy to produce, by means of chemical action upon vegetable substances, a matter analagous to Bovey coal, with the important exception that the artificial product was never bitu- minous ; and it is stated, on this authority, that true bitumen has never been formed by any artificial pro- cess hitherto devised, either from the resins or other vegetable substances : products resembling it in odour when burned and in other properties, have been obtained but the effects of alcohol or water always proved these products not to be bitumen. " But synthesis of natural products," observes Mr. Hatchett, "although required in strict chemical demonstration, is (as we have but too often occasion to know) seldom to be obtained, especially when operations are performed on bodies whose component parts are liable to an in- finite series of variations in their proportions, qualities, and modes of combination. Considering, therefore," proceeds our authority, " that bitumen and resin afford by certain operations similar products ; that resin and 62 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. bitumen are found blended together by nature, and that this mixed substance accompanies a species of coal which in many parts still exliibits its vegetable origin, whilst in others it passes into pit-coal, we may, with the greatest probability, conclude, that bitumen is a modification of the resinous and oily parts of ve- getables, produced by some process of nature, which has operated by slow and gradual means on immense masses, so that even if we were acquainted with the process, we should scarcely be able to imitate its ef- fects, from the want of time, and deficiency in the bulk of the materials. But although bitumen cannot at present be artificially formed from the resinous and other vegetable substances by any of the known che- mical processes, yet there is every reason to believe, that the agent employed by nature in the formation of coal and bitumen has been either muriatic or sul- phuric acid ; and when it is considered that common salt is never found in coal mines, except when in the vicinity of salt springs, whilst on the contrary, pyrites, sulphate of iron, and alum, most commonly are pre- sent ; these facts, together with the sulphureous odour emitted by most of the mineral coals when burned, appear strongly to evince the agency of the latter. That this has been the case, seems also to be corro- borated by the great resemblance which the coals formed artificially from many vegetable substances bear to the mineral coals ; especially as the similarity is not confined to external characters, but extends to other properties. It may be added that, by the action of sulphuric acid on vegetable bodies, a much greater portion of their carbon is converted into coal, than when the same are subjected to the effects of fire." In further illustration of the now so generally ad- SUBMERGED WOOD. 63 mitted change of vegetable matter into coal, by what- ever process, and in addition to what has been said in reference to peat, it will be found that our own island presents us with a tripartite series of fossil com- bustible substances, the intermediate member of which exhibits, in a striking manner, the coal in that stage of partial mineralization, which appeal's so con- clusive in favour of the theory of a ligneous origin : as an illustration of the most recent deposition, or modem member of this threefold series, may be men- tioned the submarine forest on the coast of -Lincoln- shire,* the timber of which has not suffered any very important change in its vegetable character. There are several other accumulations of wood in different parts of the kingdom in some cases the remains of forests known to have been existing within the period embraced by our annals. Occasionally, the sub- stratum of our immense peat depositions consists, as previously noticed, of vegetable remains of a much larger order than those forming the superior beds trees of various descriptions, the species in many in- stances readily distinguishable, and affording by their exhumation, not only supplies of fuel, but even tim- ber for various economical purposes. Striking ex- amples of this latter circumstance are daily taking place in Holderness, a large triangular district, con- sisting chiefly of peat moors, and tracts formed by the sediment of ancient inundations, bounded on one side by the German Ocean, on another by the es- tuary of the Humber, and on the third by the chalk formation of the Yorkshire Wolds.f The other ex- * Described by Correa de Serra, in PhiL Trans. 1799. f John Phillips, in Phil. Mag. April, 1834. p. 283. Mr. De la Beche (Geological Manual, p. 166) gives a concise but interesting account of seve- ral of these ligneous accumulations, as noticed by various writers. 64 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. treme series of ligneous matter, and which has under- gone the most entire change, comprises the varieties of pit-coal, so abundant in many parts of this country, and in which almost every appearance of vegetable origin has been destroyed. The formation apparently equally remote from the two extremes* just noticed, but which nevertheless discloses peculiarities singularly analagous to both of them, is brown coal, (the braun- kohlen of German Mineralogists) found abundantly in some parts of the world. In this country it is represented by the well-known strata of bituminous wood, called Bovey coal, which exhibits a series of gradations from the most perfect ligneous texture, to a substance nearly approacliing the characters of pit- coal, and, on that account locally distinguished by the name of stone coal. This fossil which is believed to have been deposited posterior to the chalk forma- tion, and which is denominated from the place where it has long been found Bovey-Tracey, near Chud- leigh, in Devonshire was first largely described by Dr. Milles in a letter to the Earl of Macclesfield, President of the Royal Society, 1760;f it was also * Lignites, which are manifestly bituminized wood, hold an intermediate place in the gradation between vegetable matter and pit coal. They have the fibre of the former, with the jetty lustre and fracture of the latter. Some lignites closely resemble peats in their chemical characters ; others seem to graduate into perfect coal. It is, therefore, the geological position in the coal measures that determines this combustible. Whatever is found in the strata above the magnesian limestone has been called a lignite coal, adds Dr. Ure, (Geology, p. 172,) from whom this passage is taken, is in fact to vegetable matter, what adipocire is to animal; the completion of the chemical change, in which the fibrous structure disappears. Lignite has generally a woody aspect ; coal always that of a rock. f Philosophical Transactions, vol. li., p. 535. The Bovey coal has been worked about a century; and the whole area explored in that time may amount to nearly twelve acres. The coal is mostly used for steam engines and in the burning of lime, and occasionally in the manufacture of earthen- ware. It is not used at present for domestic purposes, its sulphureous exha- lations being not only disagreeable, but noxious. BOVEY COAL. 65 made the subject of a series of experiments by Mr. Hatchett, the details of which were laid before that illustrious body in 1804 and 1806, and from which details many of the particulars of the present treatise are taken. On comparing the two accounts, it is impossible not to be struck with the remarkable dif- ference which the effect of the progress of science for about half a century, had in determining to such op- posite conclusions, the opinions of two philosophical individuals, having the same substance before them. The object of Dr. Milles in his remarks 'was to es- tablish the hypothesis, that this and similar substances are not of vegetable but of mineral origin ; and to prove this, he adduces a great number of cases, most of which, however, in the present state of natural history and of chemistry, must be regarded as proving the contrary. The Bovey coal is found in strata, corresponding, in almost every particular, with the fossil wood of Iceland, called surturbrand, described by Von TroiJ, Bergmann, and others. The different strata of both these substances are likewise similar, being composed of wood or trunks of trees, which have completely lost their cylindrical form, and are perfectly flattened, as if they had been subjected to an immense degree of pressure. The succession and thickness of the strata at Bovey are thus described by Mr. Parkinson : Ft. in. Ft. Stratum, No. 1... Thickness 1 2 18 3 2 4 18 5 2 6 9 7 4 8 1 9 1 10 1 9 Stratum, Xo. 11... Thickness 6 12 2 13 1 2 14 1 3 15 The great ' 2 bed in 4 floors ... 1 2 1 4 1 16 Little bed.. 1 17 Last bed... 2 7 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. The annexed sketch (fig. '2.) taken from Parkinson, shews the arrangement of strata ; the black parts, lettered A B c D and E, represent layers of coal corresponding with the fore- going Nos. 5 to 9 inclusive; the lined portions are strata of an inferior kind of coal, not worth taking up ; and the white spaces indicate argilla- ceous strata the uppermost of these, or that between the fifth and sixth bed of coal, being ten feet thick, including the two pseudo seams ; and that between the sixth and seventh beds, also inclu- ding two worthless strata, is eight feet thick. The lower coal strata furnish the best and strongest sub- stance for burning. The shaft from the grass to the bottom of the last coal stratum, is seventy-five feet deep. It has been bored thirty-three feet still deeper, but nothing was discovered, except a muddy kind of clay, intermixed with sand. The disposition of the .strata is displayed by their method of working : they begin at the top, and clear away to the distance of eight or ten fathoms, and work down, in a perpendi- cular direction, through the various strata to the bot- tom of the shaft : then recommence their operations.* The direction of the strata at Bovey, is from north to south ; the inclination or dip tending to the latter. This inclination was stated by Mr. Scammell, who furnished Parkinson with the particulars of this coal, to be about one foot in six : the leading part is from Organic Remains, vol. i., p. 124. BOVEY COAL. 67 cast to west : the northern part bassets, or comes to the surface, within an hundred yards of the shaft, where it is cut off by a bed of sand ; to what depth the southern extremity reaches had not been, and probably cannot be ascertained : it has been found, however, to extend a quarter of a mile. The eastern portion extends more than seven miles, though the western has not been traced more than two miles. The whole deposit is said to occupy a kind of basin, or ancient valley. Tins formation is by no means peculiar to Devon- shire nor even to Great Britain : strata of bitumi- nous wood are found in various parts of France, in the vicinity of Cologne, in Hesse, Bohemia, Saxony, Italy, and especially in Iceland as already mentioned. The Bovey coal is commonly of a chocolate-brown, and sometimes almost black. The quality and tex- ture are various in different strata : from some of these, it is obtained in the form of straight flat pieces three or four feet in length, resembling boards, and, therefore, called board-coal : thin pieces of tliis kind, when first dug, and while moist, will bend somewhat like horn ; but as it dries it loses its elasticity, and becomes brittle. The sectile appearance in some specimens, cut and polished by Mr. Witham, is very beautiful, and comparatively regular. Others have an oblique, wavy, and undulating texture, and, as Dr. Milles observes, have a strong resemblance to the roots of trees, from which, most probably, this sort has, in a great measure, been formed. Some kinds, also, appear to be more or less intermixed with earth ; but that which produces the most powerful and lasting fire, is called stone-coal ; it is black, with a glossy fracture : has little or none of the vegetable texture ; F 2 68 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. is more solid and compact than the others, being almost as heavy as some of the pit-coals, the nature of which it seems nearly to approach. Mr. Hatchett submitted the wavy species of Bovey coal to chemical examination, and found that 200 grains by distillation yielded : Grains. 1 . Water, which soon came over acid, and afterwards turbid, by the mixture of some bitumen 60 2. Thick brown oily bitumen 21 3. Charcoal 90 4. Mixed gas, consisting of hydrogen, carbonated hydrogen, and carbonic acid, estimated at 29 200 The charcoal, by incineration, left about four grains of yellowish ashes, consisting of alumina, iron, and silica ; but it was remarkable that there was not the smallest trace of alkali. No extractive substance was derived on digesting the coal in boiling water : but by digestion in alcohol a tincture was formed, which, by evaporation, afforded a substance possessing all the properties of resin, and proving that the whole of the proximate principles of the original vegetable have not been entirely changed a small portion of true resin, not converted into bitumen, (the ultimate effect of those causes which convert vegetable matter into coal,) still remains inherent in the mass. The Bovey coal is not only bituminised to the degree intimated above, but there are indications of an excess of inflammable matters of this class ; Dr. Milles observes, that, "Amongst the clay, but ad- hering to the coal, are found lumps of a bright yellow loam, extremely light, and so saturated with petro- leum, that they bum like sealing-wax, emitting a ACCUMULATION OF LIGNITES. 69 very agreeable and aromatic scent." This substance, however, Mr. Hatchett has found not only to be of a composition remote from that suspected by Dr. Milles, but totally different from any of the bitumens hitherto discovered, consisting partly of resin, and partly of asphaltus, and hence it has been called Retiuasphal- tum. One objection formerly urged against the vegetable origin of coal, as it partakes less of a chemical or even philosophical than of an historical character, becomes weak in proportion as our knowledge of "the extent of causes formerly and actually in operation, is in- creased. Dr. Milles, in the Remarks already ad- verted to, in enumerating the reasons why he con- siders the Bovey coal to be not of a vegetable, but of a mineral origin, says, " In the first place, there does not seem to be any imaginable cause in nature, which could bring together such a mass of fossil wood, as is found in tliis, and other strata of the like kind in different parts of Europe. It extends here [at Bovey], to the depth of seventy feet : in that at Munden [in Germany], they have sunk fifty feet, without coming to the bottom." There are few persons at the present day, so unacquainted with the signal monuments of diluvial action on the different portions of the earth's surface, as to find any difficulty in conceiving that the same tremendous energy, whatever it may have been, which has collected vast mountains of marine exuvi, would be abundantly adequate to bring to- gether vegetable masses equal to any bituminous fossil strata in the known world. It is by no means necessary to imagine that they have been transported from any great distance, though that supposition would contain in it nothing improbable. 70 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. That there might be some peculiar conditions in the exuberance and chemical nature of primeval vege- tation seems probable. M. Brongniart (in Prodrmnus des Veyet. Fossiles, 1818,) was the first who, in ex- plaining the carbonised nature of coal, thought it necessary to suppose that the atmosphere once con- tained a much larger proportion of carbonic acid gas than it does now. He assumes that as it might happen that there was then much less mould, plants must need have lived by absorbing, through the leaves, and appropriating to themselves, much carbon taken from the air. M. Th. de Saussure* has de- monstrated, that a proportion of two, three, four, and even eight per cent, of carbonic acid gas in the air, may be favourable to vegetation. In this way the gigantic height of plants at an early period is thought to be explained : while the simultaneous existence of many reptiles and the absence of mammalia is deemed to accord with the hypothesis.-}* * De Candolle. Edln. Phil Journ. Jan. 1835. f This theory is elegantly expounded by Mr. Burnet, Professor of Botany in King's College, London, as follows : " The office of ferns and the other plants of the coal formation, and the final cause of their predominance in that period, would seem from numerous facts to be, that by their assimilation of the carbon, and liberation of the oxygen with which it was combined, they might purify the atmosphere, and bring it into a condition in which it would become respirable by reptiles, beasts and man. That such was the primitive condition of the atmosphere, and that it was thus gradually purified by the growth of plants, seems to be not improbable, from the circumstance that reptiles and other cold blooded animals, which can endure and enjoy an atmosphere that would be fatal to warm blooded animals and man, are the earliest of which any fossil remains are found. That the atmosphere at first was very geatly loaded with carbonic acid, is probable from reptiles not appearing until after the coal formation : and that it required many suc- cessive generations of plants to render it respirable for birds and beasts, is also likely, as it is not until long after, that any vestiges of these animals Hi-e found. These were the immediate precursors of the human race, the sovereigns of a world which they underprize, and of whidi they little know the wonderful structure or the surpassing beauty." RECENT DRIFT TIMBER. 71 As to the supply of the material itself, we have no reason to doubt but that, assuming the more ancient coal formation to consist of land vegetables analagous in their original growth to the largest trees at present known, the forests of the antediluvian world, might furnish a sufficient supply, if we merely judge from what we know of the exuberant growth of intertropical vegetation in our own times.* To say nothing of what must be the fossil contents of a basin or valley into which some partial deluge should sweep one of the immeasurable forest tracts of North or South America, there are accumulations of drift wood taking place on some of the rivers of that quarter of the globe, which, whether destined to become coal strata, as some think, or otherwise, may, at some re- motely future period, when the land will perhaps be comparatively denuded, and other changes have taken place, present a problem of almost as disputable if not difficult solution as that of the formation of ex- isting coal fields. " In the spring, or rather winter," says Captain Basil Hall, " when the freshes or floods come down, they bring with them millions of trunks * Speaking of an epocba of the antediluvian world, when the ocean is supposed to have possessed a much higher degree of temperature, and the earth to have heen circumfused with a moist and tepid atmosphere, far different from what we see at present " the first age of the world," says Dr. Ure, " then, extending probably through several centuries, fully realised the uni- versal and unfading spring of the poets. Under such fostering powers of vegetation, the coal-measure plants were matured, in countless myriads, with a rapidity to which modern experience can furnish no parallel." As at the period, and according to the hypothesis alluded to, the difference between equatorial and polar temperatures would be at first comparatively small, so a considerable uniformity of vegetation would pervade the most distant zones. " We need not, therefore," adds the authority above quoted, "be surprised at finding the same calamites, or gigantic equisetums, buried among the coal- measures of New Holland (near Port Jackson), and of England; though now a-days, that plants are subjected to the undivided empire of the sun they differ in species with very moderate variations of latitude ; and with every change of hemisphere." 72 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. of trees technically called logs. In February or March, the quantity of these logs is sometimes so great, that not only the river itself, hut the sea for several miles off, was so completely covered over with them, that it required some skill to get through. The whole ground, if the loose and muddy soil could be so called, appeared to be formed of layers of these logs, matted together into a network, or rather a gigantic raft of rough timbers, many yards, and perhaps fathoms in depth, over hundreds of square leagues. May not this stratum of vegetable matteiv" asks the philosophic traveller, " which there is every reason to suppose stretches over the whole delta at the level of the sea, become in some future geological revolution of the world a great coal-field." Speaking of the great river Atchafalaya, and its enormous raftage, Captain Hall adds : " the river just mentioned flows out of the Mississippi at a point about 250 miles from the sea. Twenty-seven miles from the efflux the raft begins, and extends over a space of twenty miles : but as the whole distance is not filled up with timber, the aggregate raft is only ten miles long. The width of the Atchafalaya is 220 yards ; the raft extends from bank to bank, and is supposed to be about eight feet tliick. It has been accumulating for more than fifty years, and is made annually larger, by supplies of trees drifted into the river from the Mississippi." In all likelihood, this immense aggregation of drift-wood will continue to increase, until in process of time it may become covered with sand, and afterwards with vegetation of the higher order, as already at certain seasons it is gay with verdure and flowers,* and after a succession * De la Beche disparages the idea which has been promulgated relative REMOTE OR LOCAL ORIGLN OF COAL. 73 of ages, present either a seam of coal, or at least an accumulation of the analagous lignites. Various and conflicting opinions have been enter- tained by geologists, as to the original places of growth of the vegetable matters composing the great coal deposits ; including the question as to whether or not they still occupy the stations where they grew. Some have contended that they may have floated for a long time, and from vast distances, before they sunk into their present beds, and became interstra- tified by the successive subsidences of stony and other matter. Others fancy they have had an inland origin, having sprung up and thriven on the borders of vast lakes, into winch they have ultimately been swept by some sufficient agency. This lacustrine theory, is in turn objected to, on the ground that the traces of plants in some superjacent strata appear rather to indicate a littoral or marine vegetation; hence the bituminous beds have been deemed of Polynesian or insular derivation. Mr. Conybeare, however, is disposed to think that the coal vegetables were accumulated in friths and aestuaries, and after- wards buried there with the alluvial detritus that was swept away with them. Some inferences relative to the original formation of the great carbonaceous deposits of England and Scotland have been drawn from the character of the vegetable remains interspersed throughout each series. In the coal-fields of Newcastle, Durham, and York- shire, impressions and remains of cryptogamia exist in great profusion, while in the Edinburgh and Lothian basins imprints of ferns are so rare as to be reckoned curiosities. Such is the statement of Mr. to the great compactness of this raft, especially what has been said about large trees growing upon it. Geol. Man. p. 72. 74 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. Witliam : hence, according to that gentleman's hypothesis, "if we take it for granted that the coal seams are formed by the deposition of vegetable matter, produced either on the spot where it is now found, or brought from a distance, we can easily offer an explanation for the differences found to exist be- tween the coal-fields of England above alluded to, and the Scotch basins, in regard to the occurrence of fossil vascular cryptogamic plants and their impres- sions. In a [comparatively] flat country like North- umberland, Durham, and Yorkshire, surrounded by mountains of no great elevation, from which a supply of more perfect wood could have been obtained, the A'ast mass of carbonaceous matter deposited must have resulted from vegetables growing on the spot, and this may have had its origin in a great measure from the vascular cryptogamic plants, wliich a marshy country, such as it might have been, would have produced in great abundance, and with a luxuriance of wliich we can now have but little conception, unless we contemplate the profuse vegetation of the Tropics. " The Scotch coal basins, on the contrary, seem to have been formed in large inland lakes or hollows, produced by the expansion of immense bodies of water. In these lakes or hollows, the produce of vast forests, wliich may have existed in the valleys of the high regions, may have been earned down by eddies and currents. As these trees had grown at great elevations, most of those carried along by the great rivers and their tributary streams may have consisted of conifers, or plants* possessing a structure closely allied to that of our present pines.f * Dr. Darwin supposed that bitumen or petroleum, with jet, amber, and all the fossil coal in the world, owe their inflammable part to the recrements of destroyed forests of terebinthinate vegetables. f William's Fossil Vegetables, p. 9. VARIOUS OPINIONS. 75 Sharon Turner has assumed, as a not impro- bable circumstance, that the coal beds in every country represent to us where the cliief localities and exuberance of the primeval vegetation were situate. Wherever they occur, there may we presume the ancient plants were profusely standing when the transposing catastrophe came upon them. A deluge offers rational causes to us, for this destructive but ultimately useful change.* The great torrents of * The lacustrine or fluviatile origin of our coal deposits, has*been stronglv supported, not only from the character of the vegetable remains, hut more particularly from the presence of fresh water shells, &c. and the apparent absence of marine testacea. Tt seems, however, that the latter conclusion has been assumed too hastily marine remains, having lately been discovered in contact with the coal formation about Leeds and Halifax. This circum- stance, together with the fact of large petrified stems having been found rising in a vertical position through various strata, have afforded fresh grounds for resuming the theory rather of a sudden diluvial cause in the formation of coal beds, than that of an indefinitely slow process of deposition from the action of lakes or rivers. Some of these petrified stems, which are found projecting through beds of coal, of shale, and of sandstone, have been supposed to occupy the places where they grew. This, however, has been objected to, and apparently with reason, as " an unnatural idea" ; for where, it is enquired, " shall we find a tree of fifty or sixty feet in length, in a growing state, and enduring patiently the tardy process of slow lacustrine deposition, by which its lofty top shall be as well preserved for the inspection of future geologists, as the roots which are nourished in the loose sands which cover them ?" " If, then," proceeds Mr. Fairholme, " we find an in- superable argument against the theory of a slow deposition, in undefined periods of great extent, in these entire trees which intersect various parts of the coal measures, to what species of action are we to attribute the rapidity of formation which these caibonometers, if I may so call them, so plainly indicate? Are we to ascribe this rapidity of action merely to the formation of the actual strata in which such trees have been found, or are we, on the contrary, to extend the principle by fair analogy, to other portions of the series both above and below these interesting and instructive indexes I We may surely be permitted to reason from analogy, that if any one portion of an extensive series, exhibiting throughout a similarity of character, can be proved to demonstration to have been deposited in so short a space of time as to cover up and retain in equal preservation a vertical stem 60 or 70 feet in length, the other portions of the same series must have been deposited in a manner extremely similar, if not strictly identical. If we have, then, a reasonable ground for such conclusion, can we continue to look upon the 76 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. mingled earth and water, which, at that period must have been rolling around, as they poured and settled on the primitive valleys and plains, and produce that pressure, moisture, exclusion of air, confined moderate warmth, and sandy superincumhents, which appear to have been the producing causes, as they would now be, for converting plants and wood into coal.* In contending for the ligneous origin of coal, it will not of course for a moment be imagined after what has been already stated, that the mere accumu- lation of an immense quantity of wood under any circumstances with which we are precisely acquainted, or exposed to the known agencies for any length of tune, is sufficient to lead to the formation of a stratum of bituminous mineralised matter of the nature of that now under consideration ; other con- ditions which have hitherto eluded the records of the historian and the investigations of the chemist must undoubtedly concur. The observations of Dr. Correa de Serra on the wood of the submarine forest at Sut- ton, on the coast of Lincolnshire, together with many similar accounts wliich .have been published in the Pliilosophical Transactions and other works, demon- strate in the most satisfactory manner, that whether vegetables are totally or partially buried under the waves or under the earth, they are not merely by such means converted even into the most imperfect coal strata as lacustrine deposits, from fresh water, formed in the course of thousands, or, as some think, millions of ages ? It must be evident that either the facts alluded to are erroneous, or the usual line of reasoning on the coal measures, unfounded. The facts, however, speak for themselves, and are fully open to the inspection of everyone : it may therefore be fair! v assumed that suspicion must rest upon the theories in question." Fairholme on the Nature of Coal, and on the Mode of Deposition of the Coal Strata, in Phi!. Mag. Oct. 1833. p. 245. * Sacred Hist. p. 232. SUPPOSED AGENCY OF FIRE. 77 sort of coal. Some process, therefore, independent of these circumstances, must have taken place, in order that the vegetable substances, such as ligneous matter, resin, oil, &c., should become coal and bitumen. The agency of fire was naturally enough at an early period of the investigation, supposed to have been one of the co-efficients in transforming vegetable matter into coal. Modem chemistry* had made comparatively but a small progress, when the illus- trious Bergmann published his Dissertation entitled Producta Ignis subterranei chemice considerata ; for, at that time, the extent and power of chemical action in the humid way, were very imperfectly understood. In that part, however, of the above work, where he speaks of the fossil wood of Iceland called surtur- brand, he evidently appears doubtful how far volcanic fire may have acted upon it; although he conceives that in the formation of it, there has been some con- nection with volcanic operations. His words are, " Quid de ligno fossili Islandiae sentiendum sit, gnaro in loco natali contemplatori decidendum relinqnimus. Interea, ut cum vulcani operationibus nexum cre- damus, plures suadent rationes, quamvis hucusque rnodum ignoremus, quo situm texturamque adquisive- runt hsec strata." It was certainly veiy natural, pro- ceeds Mr. Hatchett, that Bergmann should entertain this opinion, in respect to the surturbrand ; and it is remarkable that a schistus embedding the real sub- stance of alder leaves in an apparently half charred state, and seemingly unknown to the celebrated che- mist above named, appeal's to be of the same nature, Hatchett's Observations, Phil. Trans, vol. 94, p. 408-9. 78 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. and is found in the same country. The leaves de- scribed by Mr. St. Fond, as enclosed in a sort of marie, are also similar, and found in a country which, according to him., was formerly volcanic. Were these substances, therefore, never found but in coun- tries Avhich either actually are or were volcanic, we should be almost compelled to believe, with the Swedish Professor, that the operations of subterra- neous fires have been concerned in the formation of these bodies, or rather in the conversion of them into their present state. But similar circumstances are found in countries where not the smallest vestige of volcanic effects can be discovered, and DeA~onshire most undoubtedly is such ; yet, nevertheless, the Bovey coal is there found similar to the surturbrand in most of its exter- nal and chemical properties, and in forming regular strata. Moreover, the half-charred appearance pre- sented by both these fossils, cannot be adduced as any proof, that the original vegetable bodies have been exposed to the partial effects of subterraneous fire ; for it is now well known that the oxidisement of sub- stances is performed, at least as frequently, and as effectually, by the humid as by the dry way.* Fos- sil charcoal, or wood which appeal's to have been exposed to the direct action of fire, does indeed occur, as well in the coal measures of tliis country as in other parts of the globef ; it must not, however, be * Trans, of the Linnaean Society, vol. iv. p. 141. f Near to Cerro in Peru, there are numerous beds of fossil charcoal, of a quality that may be used for heating steam engines, and the like purposes. The principal bed lies between strata of fine sandstone. Geologists have been somewhat perplexed to account for these terrified deposits ; it has been thought that a phenomenon recorded by Dr. Richardson, the naturalist, in Captain Franklin's expedition of discovery, respecting the shale on the MARINE VEGETABLES. 79 confounded with the lignites now under consideration. It remains, now, that we notice one other theory, which certainly appeal's plausible, if not probable. Allusion has already been made to the experi- ments of Mr. Hatchett, and his own acknowledgment that the synthetic result was imperfect. Neither that able chemist, nor Dr. Mac Culloch, could ever obtain bitumen from carbonated oak, which substance is ne- vertheless an essential ingredient in true coal : the former gentleman, therefore, concluded his researches by entirely referring the production of bitumen to some unknown process of nature in the transmutation of wood. " But, with all the deference which is so justly due to that eminent chemist, I must beg leave," says Granville Penn, " to suggest, that it would seem to be time enough to resort to that ultimate principle when all previous means of research shall have been exhausted, which does not yet appear to be the case. Experiments have, indeed, been skilfully made on vegetable matter ; but they have hitherto been made on terrestrial vegetable matter only. It seems to have been entirely forgotten in these investigations, that terrestrial vegetation is only one part of universal vegetation ; and that immense tracts of marine vege- tation flourish in all parts of the bed of the sea. We may form a sufficient judgment, from the vast quan- coasts of the Arctic Sea, may bear on the question. This shale composed precipitous banks, which in many places were actually on fire. The com- bustion originates, according to Dr. Richardson, in the circumstance of the shale containing a considerable quantity of sulphur in a state of such mi- nute division, that it very readily attracts oxygen from the atmosphere, and inflames. " Nothing, I think," says Mr. Rennie, " could explain in a more satisfactory manner the occurrence of charcoal in coal measures and other mineral strata. In the anthracite mines of North America, for example, wood charcoal occurs, with the ligneous structure as well marked as in the charcoal recently prepared." 80 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. tity of fuel and other marine plants vulgarly united under the denomination of sea weeds, which are con- tinually cast upon our coasts, and which are com- monly used for fuel in the islands of Jersey and Guernsey, of the immense quantities of these tiibes of vegetation that must be contained in the different basins and depths of the sea. That the great majority of naturalists, who inhabit the interior of the European continent, should overlook this vast portion of vege- tation amidst the interminable forests with which they see themselves surrounded, would be less surprising than that im should neglect to remark it, the founda- tions of whose soil are every where encompassed by it." "Now, since all naturalists," proceeds Mr. Penn, " are agreed in this one point, that our present con- tinents were heretofore the bed of the sea ; since beds of coal are found to lie in concavities varying greatly in extent, from a few to many miles, and containing numerous strata of coal, alternating with sand-stone, clay, &c. wliich describes a formation analagous to an ancient sea bed ; since marine sub- stances are found in the adjoining strata ; since nu- merous sea shells,* and even bones of marine animals, are found in imperfect coal, as in that of Pomiers, in Dauphiny, although none remain recognizable in perfect coal ; a strong argument of probability seems to arise, that, if the substance of coal is of vegetable origin, we are to seek for that origin in marine vege- * Some of the lower beds of the coal may have been derived in part from marine forests, if the occasional occurrence of salt-water testacea be admit- ted as proof : " but there are at least upper and middle coal strata 1 000 feet in thickness, and several hundreds of square miles in extent, without a sin- gle vestige of marine remains." It is at the same time confidently affirmed, that no unexceptionable specimen of a marine plant embedded in rock has ever yet been produced. ORIGIN OF COAL FROM FUCI. 81 tation ; that the beds of coals, in their extensive con- cavities, were immense accumulations of fuel, &c., loaded with the various animal substances that shelter among them, which were overwhelmed by vast agge- rations of the loose soils of the sea in the course of its retreat, and were left for decomposition and re- composition hy the chemical action of the marine fluid which they contained, and with which the enclosing and compressing soils were saturated : under which compression they had lain in course of bituminisation and mineralization, for some thousands of years be- fore they were brought to light 'entirely dissolved and recomposed in their elements, so as to be con- verted into the fossil masses to which we give the name of coal.' In this class of vegetation, so cir- cumstanced," adds our author, " it is perhaps possi- ble, that the ingredient might yet be found, winch was uniformly wanting in the carbonisation of wood of earthy growth."* The notion, once more prevalent than at present, that the coal strata are derived from the covering up of ancient peat bogs, appears to derive no support from evidence for the analogy subsisting between certain relations in the carboniferous series, and sec- tions of some interstratified turbaries, however it may illustrate the process by which vegetable matter be- comes converted into coal, affords no indications of a common origin. For, however unreasonable it might be to expect to find the remains of any of the nume- rous mosses which enter into the composition of re- cent peat, in strata where almost every trace of the original organisation of plants presumed to have been * Perm's Comparative Estimate, vol. ii. p. 187, G 82 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. so much better fitted to resist decomposition is ob- literated, still the associate shales do frequently pre- sent us with impressions of matters scarcely, if at all, less delicate in structure. It is, moreover, judging from the present state of things, not probable that tracts of moss covered large portions of the earth at the era of the coal formation, in common with plants, the remains of which are allowed to indicate the con- currence of intertropical vegetation, but not of the bog-formations of temperate and polar regions. That the common bituminous coal, so abundant in this country, and in the eastern Continent, as well as in some parts of North America, owes its origin to vegetable depositions of some kind, at whatever time, or under whatever circumstances these have taken place, may be said to be all but universally admitted at present. Many eminent geologists, however, are hardly yet satisfied to refer the vast mountains of matter, apparently so much farther removed from ligneous identity as the anthracite appears to be, to the same cause. To this reference they have found an objection which, to them, seems of itself insuper- able, in the vast quantity of this useful mineral. But is this objection really insuperable ? Does it not proceed from a limited view of the operations of na- ture, from a disinclination to allow sufficient time for the execution of her stupendous designs ? Many errors in geological science are justly attributable to an erroneous or limited estimate of time ; and yet the eloquent chronicles of inanimate nature tell us of changes in the constitution of the globe which we inhabit, for the accomplishment of which ages must have been requisite. How many years must have rolled away, after the disruption of the original rock, ANTHRACITE. 83 before the sandstone formation attained its present degree of compactness. Those, therefore, who deny that the anthracite is of vegetable origin, must bring forward some other objection than the want of time : and if they found their objection upon the depth and extent of this formation, we urge the analogy of the bituminous coal, and thus sustain the claim of the anthracite to a vegetable origin. It will not be de- nied that the power which could create mineral car- bon, could also create vegetable carbon, and after- wards by some great convulsion, subject it to an irre- sistible force. The foregoing are the sentiments of Mr. Bunker, an American writer, whose opinions are given in Silliman's Journal. "Indeed," continues this gentleman, " it seems to me more in unison with the other arrangements of Providence, that the vege- tables which beautified the face of the earth, for the happiness of one race of beings, should afterwards, when those beings had passed away, be stored up for the use of other successive generations of men." But the object of Mr. Bunker's communication to the Journal above-named is not, he says, "to engage in the discussion of the question, whether anthracite coal is of vegetable origin, except so far as may be necessary in the exhibition of the testimony which I am able to produce in support of that opinion. Mr. Bakewell, in his introduction to geology, asserts, that no vegetable impressions have ever been disco- vered in the anthracite, and I believe that most geologists are of the same opinion. I have been so fortunate as to obtain from a small quantity of Schuylkill coal, six specimens, proving that trees were at least present when the coal was formed, if vegetable matter is not material. The best specimen G 2 84 NATURAL HISTORY OF COAL. presents the longitudinal section of a piece of wood, ten inches long and two inches broad. Another spe- cimen exhibits a similar section six inches long. A third contains a bit of wood one inch square, and one tenth of an inch in tliickness, and this piece could be easily detached. Another specimen exhibits a sec- tion of wood, from four to five inches long, and about three inches in width. The grain of tliis piece resem- bles that of the oak. A fifth contains a section four inches by three. The sixth is the counterpart of the fifth : the two pieces being the parts of a larger spe- cimen, the cleft of the coal dividing the wood equally and similarly, leaving a portion in each division. These specimens exhibit not impressions merely, but real wood, resembling charcoal, although softer. In examining coal, I have often found indentations, which by the aid of the imagination, could be magni- fied into vegetable impressions ; but I never before found real wood. About the specimens which I pos- sess, there can be but two suppositions. Either this wood was introduced in some incomprehensible mode into the heart of the solid mass of the coal, or else it is a remnant, not wholly consolidated, of the material from which the coal was formed. I believe that the latter supposition is more philosophical, and conse- quently more rational than the former." * * Sillimau's American Journal, 1833. CHAPTER V. ORGANIC REMAINS. Opinions of the Ancients concerning Organic Remains Equivocal generation Operation of plastic and forming energies Conditions of vegetable remains Families of plants existing at tlie period wJien the Coal beds were deposited Plants of the upper Coed Cycadiform fronds Ligneous fossils of the true Coal formation Mr. Witham's observations Mo- difying causes of the variety of casts of stems disco- vered in different substances Figures and descrip- tions Microscopical examination of the minute structure of fossil bodies Probability tliat trees of the more complicated woody structure, as well as the merely vascular and cellular kinds, existed at the period of the Coal formation Fossil fishes Mus- cles Question of toads found alive in tJie Coal rocks Button's observations on the traces of exist- ing vegetable tissues in the perfect kinds of Coal. J_T may now be interesting to advert somewhat more particularly to those phenomena which bring the coal formation into such immediate contact with the traces or remains of organic matter : and, although it is almost entirely in the rocks subjacent to, or incum- bent upon, the carboniferous strata, that we meet with 86 ORGANIC REMAINS. such abundant and diversified remains of the animal world, yet has the latter series always, when pene- trated, attracted the attention of philosophers to its appropriate suites of vegetable exuvia.* The ancients, who were carefully observant of na- tural appearances, could not fail to become in some measure acquainted with the fossil remains of organic bodies those " medals of creation," as the illustrious Bergmann has strikingly designated them. They were, however, sadly puzzled to account for their origin. Hence, they supposed the various lapides figurati, lapides idiomorphi, lapides qui fiyuram ha- bent conchte, cochlea, &c., as they were cautiously called, to have had some equivocal seminal origin, and to have grown, during an anomalous sort of life, in the situations where they were found : while other and later writers referred the production of those or- ganic fossils to a principle which they announced un- der such conveniently ambiguous terms as the vis plaMica and the vis formativa. These theories were not merely applied to solve the knotty problem of animal reliquiae, but also to account for those accu- mulations of bituminous wood which were so fre- quently discovered, and the striking dendritic forms of wliich were supposed to have arisen from tendencies to such formation inherent in the bitumen. Andrea * The organic remains of the coal formation are prodigiously numerous especially of Plants. The list given by Mr. De la Beche, and comprising fossils from this formation in all parts of the world, exhibits the names of the following numbers of species ; Euphorbiacea;, 9. Conifer, 4. Doubtful Co - nifera: t lO. Dicotyledonous plants of doubtful affinity, 20. Palmai,3. Canna-, 1. Monocotyledons, of doubtful affinity, 14. Equisalacecc, 15. Filices, 118. Lycopodiacea;, 61. Plants of uncertain affinity, 42. Of animal remains the list presents, Pisces, 3. Mollusca, 14. Condi if era, 14. Among the latter are many marine remains which may perhaps belong rather to the strata alternating with the inferior rocks, than to the coal measures, in which, how- ever, some of them have certainly been found. EXPLODED THEORIES. 87 Mattiola, an eminent botanist, embraced the notion of Agricola, a German miner, who had written on the subject, that a certain " materia pinguis," or fatty matter, made to ferment by heat, gave birth to fossil organic shapes. Of this opinion was Fallopio of Pa- dua, who not only conceived that petrified shells had been generated by fermentation in the spots where they are found, but gravely supposed that certain cu- rious antique vases dug up at Monte Testaceo near Rome, were natural impressions stamped in the soil ! Among the last supporters of the opinion of the ge- neration of these organic bodies in the bowels of the earth, observes Mr. Parkinson, may be mentioned the celebrated Langius, who strenuously contended for their having thus obtained their forms and exist- ence ; Dr. Plott, who believed their figures to result from the operation of certain plastic powers with which certain saline bodies were endowed ; and, lastly, Lhwyd, who combated the ris plastica of Plott, and supported the idea of their production from the semi- na of fishes, &c., raised with vapours from the sea, and conveyed, by the clouds and rain, through crevices or fissures into the internal parts of the earth. The more rational conjecture of Woodward, who attributed their situation to the effects of the general deluge, was rendered of less effect, in opposing these notions, from his having attributed to the waters of the deluge, an almost universal solvent power; by which, he supposed the rocks and mountains were melted down, and thus allowed the admission of these substances, not considering that by the same power, the organic bodies themselves would have been reduced to a mass not bearing their proper figures.* * Parkinson, Org. Rem. I. 23. 88 ORGANIC REMAINS. Regarding the inflammable matter of our Coal- fields as consisting chiefly, if not entirely, of accumu- lations of land vegetables once growing in the coun- tries where they are now found embedded, and not as the transported reliques of a Flora of other climes ; and finding in the proximate strata of shale, ironstone, or sandstone bodies, which, retain at least in the ex- ternal traces of their original organic character confi- gurations analagous to those of plants now only growing in tropical regions, scientific enquirers seem to be agreed in opinion, that, at the period when these plants flourished, the climate where they are now found must, to say nothing of other conditions, at least have been much hotter and moister than at present. We may premise that, in examining these relics of a former world, whether in the mine, or as detached specimens, it is, necessary to decide carefully whether they be actual petrefactions, in other words organic matters penetrated and changed by the bituminising or lapidifying processes, or the mere infiltration of sand, clay, &c., into a cavity formed by the decay of the original body after the enveloping substance had hardened about it so as to form a mould, or only casts of such. The massive and often beautiful impressions of stems, raised from our coal mines occur in four different conditions ; some consist of vegetables con- verted into carbonaceous clay, and still invested with their bark, reduced to the state of charcoal ; others exhibit impressions of the same plant, with the sur- face entire, upon clay, slate, or sandstone ; others are decorticated vegetables themselves ; and, lastly, others are impressions of these decorticated plants.* * This view of the subject, first espoused by Mr. Steinhuuer, has been very strikingly illustrated by a writer in " London's Magazine of Natural History," UPPER COAL VEGETABLES. 80 The subject of antediluvian botany has exercised the ingenuity of the shrewdest investigators of phy- sical phenomena, both in our own country and the Continent, * with the advantage that the fossil Floras of the coal formation in different places are remark- ably similar. The naming and classification, how- ever, of fossil specimens, exhibiting for the most part such varying and equivocal characteristics, and often such slight analogies to existing genera, must, it is obvious, be so difficult a task, that comparatively little of systematic harmony can be expected ; and these difficulties increase as we descend from the compara- tively recent to the more ancient deposits. Mr. John Phillips, of the York Museum (Professor of Geology in King's College, London), has, in the first part of his interesting " Illustrations of the Geology of Yorkshire," figured twenty species of monocotyledo- nous plants, as occurring in the coal associated with the liasic and oolitic beds about Whitby, and com- prising specimens belonging to the kindred families lycopodinae, equisetacese, filices, cycadese, and palmae, of Steinberg ; upon wliich he remarks that " the result of all accurate enquiries into the nature and distribu- tion of fossil plants, is, that they consist of three great distinct groups of species, wliich occupy as many peculiar repositories in the series of secondary strata: one group lies above the chalk; (namely with the more recent lignites) another is included between the chalk and the lias (i. e. connected with the Whitby coal) and a third occupies the coal measures (vol. viii. p. 34), where figures are given of the conditions of the stems of Semperviiwm arboretum, Linn., in the progressive stages of decay. * The great source whence our geologists have hitherto mainly drawn their knowledge of fossil plants, is the splendid work, the Flora der Vorwelt of Count Stemberar. 90 ORGANIC REMAINS. and mountain limestone" in other words, is associated with the more ancient carboniferous deposits. " A cursory observer," adds Mr. Phillips, " may, perhaps, be led to confound together the ferns and calamites of the coal district with the ferns and equiseta of the oolitic rocks : though to a botanical eye their differ- ence is very apparent : but who can mistake the lepi- dodendra of the former, the cycadiform fronds of the middle period, and the dicotyledonous leaves and fruits which abound above the chalk ?" * As a speci- men of a remarkable family of plants, the remains of which occur so extensively in the oolitic and liasic beds Fig. 3. [4 natural size.] tying aboVC tllC true coal forma- tion, fig. 3. in the margin is given from Phil- lips : it is Cyca- dites lanceolatus, and occurs with a variety of other species, about Whitby. Cycas, a term applied by Theophrastus to a palm tree, is now used to distinguish a natural order of vegetables, introduced by botanists and phy- tologists as a connecting link between the ferns and the palms ; they appear at the era of the Jura forma- tion, which is regarded as the equivalent of the oolite rocks of English geologists, and seem to have borne an excessive relation to contemporaneous types, as compared with the present state of things. M. Brongniart is said to have obtained from the formation in question, seventeen species of fossil Cycadece, eleven * Geol. Yorks. 155. REMAINS OF PALMS. 91 of them belonging to the genus Zamia : so that a family, which now forms scarcely a thousandth part of the existing vegetation, and which flourishes only near the equator, at the period when the roestone was deposited, formed one half of the European vegetation.* Among the more striking vegetable remains dis- tributed in the coal formation, may be mentioned those usually identified with, or allied to, the genera of palms, pines, tree ferns, arborescent grasses, cac- tuses, and some of the verticillate plants.f Almost all authors agree in representing the magnificent family of palms as having existed at a very early era of the vegetable world, and as being found buried with the others : and their remains, viz. fragments of stems, fronds, and fruits, are said to occur in the older coal formation*, The singular structure of the wood of this genus of trees renders the identification of the fossil specimens apparently less difficult, though not absolutely certain : the Rev. W. D. Conybeare refers the trunks or stems thus discovered partly to arundaceous plants, approximating to those now known ; and to a very peculiar order, distinguished by the cortical part being entirely covered by regular impressions, resulting from the petioles and fallen leaves, ranging round them in spiral lines these have been supposed to belong partly to the palmace- ous order, and partly to anomalous forms, constituting * De Candolle, in Edin. Phil. Journ. -vol. xviii. p. 89. 1835. f The Rev. J. Hodgson, author of the History of Northumberland, says : " We have seen ears of barley, and the leaves of pine apples," [ananas, or merely fir cones?] taken from the schistus enclosing the coal near New- castle. Beautifully distinct impressions, analagous to those which Mr. Hodgson so confidently attributes to " ears of barley," are before the writer of this note. [| natural size.] 02 ORGANIC RE31AINS. a transition link between these and the coniferous plants, similar to that already established in Professor Fig. 4. Sprengel's Natural System. Fig. 4. is a fossil vegetable, from the coal near Buxton, in Derby sliire, where the impressions are frequent. Martin* says the original was " doubtless one of the fir tribe." It may be doubted whether it were a small cone or stro- bilus, or merely a portion of a branch : analgous specimens frequently occur; and the ironstone nodules about Ket- ley, in Shropshire, sometimes contain beautiful lepidodendra and lepidostrobi, the place of the original vegetable being occupied with a dark sparry concretion, occa- sionally investing some portion of the woody stem. A genus of plants, called by Dr. Martius, Yuccites, and which, he says, constitute a series allied to the palms, differs in structure from most of the monoco- tyledones, in having the stem broadly expanded above by a more or less perfect dichotomy, also makes its appearance among the primitive forms. Nor is it at all to be wondered at that such specimens should occur in our coal mines, apparently of the same order with plants of which we still have living examples, as evidence of a former world, the most ancient of all our vegetable productions, and of which may be adduced as an instance the famous dragon tree of Oratava. It must not be forgotten that when attempts are made to discriminate the genera of vegetables, sup- posed to have entered chiefly into the original com- * retrificata Derbiensia, tab. 1 1. WOODY TISSUE IN TRUE COAL. 93 position^ of the combustible beds of the carboniferous strata, no idea is thereby intended to be conveyed as if actual stems, impressions of plants, or ligneous structure, were ordinarily discernible in the mass of the true coal. Generally speaking, indeed, the very reverse of this is the fact. The vegetable matters, whose forms are so distinctly preserved, occur, for the most part, in the non-inflammable layers of the formation, the shale, the sandstone, the ironstone, &c.* It is the form and structure of fossil plants so situated, from which has been inferred the type of genera so changed by the union of chemical and me- chanical causes as to exhibit no seeming trace of the original organization. " Except in a few instances," says Mr. William, " I have ineffectually tried, with the aid of the microscope, to obtain some insight into the structure of coal. O wing to its great opacity, which is probably due to mechanical pressure, the action of chemical affinity, and the percolation of acidulous waters, all traces of organisation appear to have been obliterated. After frequent trials, how- * Iii some instances gigantic steins occur, partaking of the nature of the strata through which they pass ; in others they are composed wholly of sandstone ; and again, as in the case of the celebrated Craigleith fossil tree, they are coated with coal : it is commonly the hark changed into coal which presents that beautiful figure-work so characteristic of the carbonaceous reliquia. In the measures immediately below, as well as those above the High Main coal in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, many large stems (Si- gillaria:) have been found in a vertical position. At Killingworth colliery they rose ten feet, passing through nearly as many strata of shale and sand- stone, and their roots spread out in the shale. To adopt the words of Mr. de la Beche, " we can scarcely refuse to admit with Mr. Wood [who first de- cribed them] that these stems are exactly in the position in which they grew, the shale being the soil or mud in which they vegetated." It appears more probable, that having been torn np by the causes which accumulated the sedimentary beds, these trees may have floated from a distance on the water, or perhaps on the silt or mud into which their roots, first sinking by their superior gravity, determined them in the upright position in which they are found. 94 ORGANIC REMAINS. ever, I have at length been gratified by the discovery of a regular and beautiful texture in the centre of a piece of coal from the mountain limestone group. Tliis, hi many respects, indicates woody tissue, and undoubtedly leaves scope for our most sanguine ex- pectations." The traces of organisation are, however, obscure in the slice of coal represented by this gentle- man, especially as compared with the astonishing regularity of structure displayed by many fossil stems, exhibiting in several instances a texture as perfect as can be obtained from the most delicate section of a recent plant. The late Rev. Henry Steinhauer, in a " Memoir of Fossil Reliquia of Unknown Vegetables in the Coal Strata," communicated to the American Philo- sophical Society in 1817, figures a specimen under the name of Phytolithus tesselatus, and the original of which, he says, assists in elucidating a circumstance very frequently attending these petrifactions, in which pail of the original vegetable matter is transformed into stone. In such fossils the cast is sometimes very neat and complete, as in the present instance ; while the matrix, on the contrary, is very indistinct; at other times the cast is very obscure, while the matrix exhibits all the marking very exactly. From these observations, it would appear, that, sometimes the cast set or hardened before the matrix, sometimes the matrix before the cast ; and that one or the other continued soft after the vegetable matter had under- gone that degree of liquifaction, which must evidently have taken place before it was converted into that coally substance which we now find. When, on the contrary, vegetable matter resisted decomposition till both the cast and the matrix had become fixed, both RECENT AND FOSSIL STEMS. 95 must exhibit equally perfect traces of the original form, which is sometimes the case. It seems also impossible, from the above, to imagine the operation of fire to have had any share in effecting these changes. Fig. 5. represents this fossil from Steinhauer, and which is supposed to be identical with the Lepidodendron tesse- latum of Sternberg's arrange- ment, and rendered particu- larly interesting in connection f / with the following remarks. [' The tree-ferns, which consti- tute so beautiful a feature of the tropical regions, ex- hibit several characters-, by wliich they may be com- pared with the ancient plants ; but as they have been seen by comparatively few botanists, their structure is almost too little known to allow of their comparison with the vegetables dug up from our coal mines. Dr. Martius noticed one specimen in Brazil, so re- markable for the tesselated surface of its caudex, that he was not only struck by the novelty of the circum- stance, but, on comparing it and eight other species with figures in Count Steinberg's work, he found them connected by so strong an affinity, as to enter- tain no doubts of their generic identity. This writer, in a paper * read before the Royal Botanical Society at Ratisbon, in 1824, describes thirteen species of fossil filicites, respectively exhibiting on their surfaces those striking configurations wliich render them re- markable in the cabinets of the curious, and still characterise many plants growing in South America. * Translated in Edin. Phil. Journ. xii. 52. 96 ORGANIC REMAINS. Fig. 6. [J natural siz,.] F'i(J. G. sents a specimen of the Euphorbites vulgaris of Artis, which lias not, he says, been figured by any other au- thor, though found in the greater pail of the coal fields of Europe. The cicatrices are flat, fish-shaped, the upper part trigonal ; glands two, which, when the bark is absent, appear as twin tubercles on the ligneous fibres. These are a very striking species of stems : that, from wliich Artis made his drawing, was nine feet long, five feet in cir- cumference at the lower extremity, and one foot nine inches at the upper. In one of the abandoned coal mines near Wentworth, seven trunks of tliis plant were suspended freely from the roof: some of them projected a foot, and the largest measured eight feet in circumference. In addition to various species of sigittaria analogous to the above, there are several varieties common in collections, consisting of slabs fluted as uniformly as if wrought with a carpenter's plane, and the ribs of which exhibit neither glands nor cicatrices. The writer of the article on coal, in " Rees' Cyclopedia," mentions, that curious visitors used to be shewn, on the roof of a lateral opening in one of the Kenton pits, near Newcastle, a variety of specimens of singular plants, somewhat like grasses, fems, vetches, &c. imprinted upon a sort of blue slaty stone : the different plants are remarkably distinct from each other. There is also, in one part, the VERTICAL AND PROSTRATE STEMS. 97 trunk of a tree,- many blocks of which have been taken out, to make seats in a neighbouring garden. As far as the stone has been cut, the tree has been traced, even to its smallest branches ; and the rough- ness of the bark is still preserved in the stone : the whole of this stratum," adds the writer, -"is one unin- terrupted continuation of these impressions of vege- tables : it is nearly horizontal, and 112 yards from the surface." While the assemblages of the more delicate vege- table forms, which have left their impressions in certain strata, appear to have been heaped confusedly toge- ther, and while the stems of much larger tribes have been much compressed, and are mostly found lying in a position parallel to the enclosing stratum, there is a third class of fossil trees, individuals of which are often found in nearly vertical attitudes, apparently standing where they have grown, their roots distinctly expanded in the lower beds, while, in some instances, the stem rises through several different strata. Num- bers of these sigillanae have been observed in the High Main coal bed, as well as in other places.* They are the casts mostly in sand-stone of plants lined and jointed in the manner of bamboos, and sometimes two or three feet in diameter. The stem found in Craigleith Quarry, near Edinburgh, is forty- seven feet in length, the bark being converted into coal. Stems nearly as long, and four feet and a half in diameter, have sometimes occurred in the coal districts in the North of England. * An appropriate depository the Museum of the Natural History Society, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, is rich in splendid specimens of this and the other fossils from the circumjacent coal district. There is, in the Museum of the Philosophical Society at York, a remarkably fine sigillaria, presented by Lord Milton, in 1832, from the collieries of Earl Fitzwilliam, near Rotherham. H 98 ORGANIC REMAINS. Fig. 7. represents, of the natural f size, the rhoraboidal configurations of a highly beautiful specimen of Lepido- dendron, (Sternbergii ?) in the Mu- seum of the Sheffield Literary and Philosophical Society. The entire im- pression is about eight inches by six, of polished coal, on a mass of dark clay ironstone : it is accompanied by a fail*, but less striking, slab of Lep. ^" Obovatum, Sterrib. from the Elsecar Colliery, near Rotherham, where many very fine coal fossils of these kinds have been met with. A very common but remarkable petrifaction occurs abundantly in the coal districts of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in Derbyshire : it has also been found on the top of Ingleborough, in the coal strata of Northumberland, at Dudley, in Shropshire, in the neighbourhood of Bristol, and in several other places. With respect to the included or constituent matter, it seems always to coincide with that of the stratum in which it is embedded, with a slight modification of density : in a piece encrusted with coal, and now before the writer of this notice, the phytolithus itself consists almost entirely of iron pyrites, and is nearly as ponderous as metal. It is most abundant in the fine grained silicious stone, provincially called calliard or ganister, used for mending the roads, and often exhibiting films and encrustations of coal this matter generally blackening if not investing the fossil, which always occurs as a compressed cylinder, varying in diameter from three to twelve inches. The surface is marked in quincuncial order with pustules, or rather depressed areola 3 , with a rising in the middle, GANISTER FOSSILS. 99 in the centre of wliich rising a minute speck is often visible.* Mr. Martin suspected that these pustules were the marks of the attachment of the penduncles of leaves : at all events, long tubular acini, fibres, or leaves, are sometimes to be seen proceeding from the areolae of the central cylinder in rays through the stratum in every direction, to the distance, it is said, of twenty feet, though the present writer could never trace them to that extent. These remains belong to the genus Stigmaria^ of Brongniart, and characterise the lower or ganister coal series of Yorkshire. J In making a large reservoir at Crooks-moor, near Shef- field, in 1833, thousands of tons of this stone were raised and carted away to mend the roads, during which time it was impossible to pass the heaps of broken matter without being struck by the prodigious numbers of the casts of these vegetables, and also with the profusion of long riband like leaves with which every piece of ganister appeared to be interlaced throughout, and which, from the black or pied aspect * Steinhauer on Fossil Reliquiae, p. 8. f Stigmaria Ficoides of Lindley and Hutton, who have given (Vol. I.) some beautiful representations of different stems of this class. These Au- thors are of opinion that the Stigmaria in question was a prostrate land plant, the branches of which radiated regularly from a common centre, and finally, became forked : that it was dicotyledonous; of a succulent nature; and that the tubercles upon the stem are the places from which the leaves, which are supposed to have been succulent and cylindrical have fallen off. The pre- sent may be as favourable an opportunity as may occur to the present writer, for expressing his admiration of the " Fossil Flora" of Lindley and Hutton : so exquisite are the illustrations, and so accurate and scientific the descrip- tions, that although Sternberg's splendid work will always be regarded as the foundation of our knowledge on this subject, it will no longer be the reproach of our Oryctologists, that the best, not to say only methodical description of our native fossils exists in the writings of a foreigner. J In Phil. Mag. and Journ. for Nov. 1832, p. 349, is an article on the above member of the Coal Series, by J. Phillips, Esq. of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. H 2 100 ORGANIC REMAINS. [jnSkuize: wn i cn they sometimes give it, have pro- bably led to the provincial appellation of " crow-stone." Fig. 8. is a nodule of bind, with the impression of some verticillate plant, co- pied from Martin ; it is probably one of the asterophyllites, much finer speci- mens of which genus are sometimes met with.* Fig. 9. is the pseudo royal filicite of the same au- thor, a species of Neuropteris, single pinnae or leaflets of which in nodules of brown ironstone, are not uncommon ; N. gigantea, the fronds of which are supposed to have been several feet long, differs chiefly from the foregoing in having pointed leaflets some- what more distantly separated upon the midrib of each pinnate leaf. Vegetable impressions, as before remarked, are often met with in nodules of ironstone ; and we sometimes witness analogous re- sults in the occurrence of recent leaves very delicately preserved in those deposits of our ferruginous waters where ochre is formed : hence, as Dr. Darwin ob- served, the various ores of " dusky iron sleep in dark abodes, And ferny foliage nestles in their nodes." * One of these, the asterophyllites longifolia of Lindley and Hutton, is figured in " Mammet's Geological Facts and Observations," as occurring in the coal field of Ashby-de-la-Zouch ; this work contains one of the best series of accurately drawn and coloured representations of the coal vegetables which has been published in this country. Fig. 10. IMPRESSIONS OF FERNS. [J natural size.] 101 Fig. 10. is Splie- nopteris crenata, a species of fern deli- cately imprinted on blue shale : it is one of the most pleasing objects of its class, and, with the forego- ing, delineated from beautiful specimens now lying before the writer of these pages. Fig. 11. represents small specimens of three other vegetables occasionally met with in strata juxtaposed with the coal : A. a fern (Aleutopteris vidgatior, Steinberg) ; B. sup- posed to belong to a genus of plants, inter- mediate between the equiseta and graminse, (Volkmannia distacliia, Sternberg) ; c. small portion of a minute specimen of a handsome branching fern, (Neurop- teris gigantea, Brongn.) This is a vegetable of fre- quent occurrence in most coal fields, and, with both the others, is generally met with in bluish indurated clay. In consequence of the dictum of M. Adolphe Brongniart, expressed in a highly interesting essay on the nature of the vegetation which covered the 102 ORGANIC REMAINS. surface of the earth at the different epochs of the formation of its crust,* it had become, as it were, a received law of nature, not to be disputed, that no phrenogamous vegetable existed during the oldest of his epochs, no remains of such plant having been discovered in the first of his four formations, com- prising the numerous strata of grauwacke, encrinal limestone, and carboniferous rocks, magnesian lime- stone, and red sandstone. In contravention of the hypothesis as applying to the first of the above periods, Mr. Wynch has remarked,! that it is a well known fact in the neighbourhood of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, that the large trunks of trees found mineralized in the sandstone strata of that district, are branched in the same way as our forest timber, and must, of course, have belonged to the dicotyledonous subdivi- sion of plants. Other evidence corroborative of this opinion has been produced. It is, however, to H. T. M. Withain, of Lartington, that geologists are indebted for the means of a more extended insight into the structure of vegetable or- ganic remains, than those commonly possessed. This gentleman suggested, and first practised with sin- gular success, the method of cutting from fossil stems transversely and longitudinally thin slices, and having cemented them to pieces of glass, polished them so as to render the internal structure strikingly conspicuous under the microscope. The results of an ample series of experiments, undertaken with the view of developing any traces which the lapidifying and carbonizing processes may .have spared in such remains of the ancient Flora of our globe, as are com- monly met with, have been published by Mr. Witharn, * Translated in Edin. Phil. Journ. vi. 34!>, &c. t -Mag. Nat. Hist. iii. 373. PRIMEVAL VEGETABLE FORMS. 103 in an interesting volume, illustrated by exquisitely engraved specimens of skeleton structure.* It is well known to botanists, that the stems of monocotyledonous vegetables present a system of sap vessels and fibres widely different from that of the dicotyledonous tribes \ the former being exemplified by the internal structure of grasses, reeds, &c.; the latter, by the more solid texture of our larger trees. Such being the physiological fact, it has been a favourite theory with certain continental geologists to assume that, judging from the remains, every deposit, from the oldest to the most recent strata, exhibits a progressive developement of vegetable and animal forms, from the simplest to the most complex. Brongniart is the original propounder of this hypo- thesis, which is opposed by Mr. Lyell, Lindley and Hutton, as well as others, on satisfactory grounds; and however plausible the idea, it appeal's to be fast giving way before the investigations to which the method of the assiduous analyst above named has given rise. " From what has already been done," says Mr. Witham, " we are led to believe that the surfaces of the earth, as they successively existed, were adorned in those remote periods, with trees containing woody cellular tissue, differing entirely from that presented by the vascular cryptogamic plants, such as the Equi- setaceae, Lycopodiaceae, and Filices." Our author willingly admits that, at the period of the deposition of the mountain limestone and coal series, "there existed Equisetaceae ten feet high, * "The Internal Structure of Fossil Vegetables found in the Carboniferous and Oolitic Deposits of Great Britain Described and Illustrated." 4to. with plates, 1833. 104 ORGANIC REMAINS. monocotyledonous plants and tree-ferns from fifty to sixty feet high, and arborescent Lycopodiacca? from sixty to seventy feet high ; but I must," he adds, " contend, that there also existed coniferous trees, or such as contained a complicated woody structure, in great abundance, and many of them of a height equal to the loftiest of those just mentioned. That the preponderance of vascular cryptogamic plants was considerable, I do not wish to question. Many of the shale strata accompanying the combustible beds of the coal-fields, contain innumerable impressions of Filices, Equisetaceae, and Lycopodiaceae ; but that the beds, particularly at the bottom of the coal fields, also contain numberless specimens of gymnospermous phanerogamic plants, or of trees analagous to them, is now established beyond dispute. From the frequent occurrence, therefore, of trees possessing an exogenous structure, I cannot help suspecting the correctness of the assertion, that, 'the class which almost of itself composed the Flora of this period, is that of the vascular cryptogamic plants, and, in fact, that of two hundred and sixty species discovered in this formation, two hundred and twenty belong to that class.' "* Proceeding to particulars, Mr. Witham mentions that vegetable fossils, evidently analagous to the tribe of pines, if not identical with the true coniferae, have been found in the quarry of Craigleith, near Edinburgh, where some of the stems measured be- tween forty and fifty feet in length, with a diameter, at their widest part, of at least five feet. Also, at Lenncl Braes and Allen Bank, in Berwickshire ; in .several places about Newcastle-upon-Tyne ; and * Fossil Vegetables, p. 6. CALAMITES STEINHAUERI. 105 especially about five miles west of the city of Durham, fossil plants are described as found and resembling the Coniferae. " If, therefore," concludes Mr. Witham, " the argument that the combustible beds of our coal-fields are composed of vascular cryptogamic plants, rests upon the numerous impressions of the scattered remains of the leaves and stems of that class, why should the many magnificent members of the phanerogamic class be allowed to lie speechless in their early graves, instead of proclaiming the an- tiquity of their origin, and the usefulness of their remains ?" Mr. Steinhauer has described under the appellation Fig. 12. of Phylolithus sulcatus, (fig. 12.) an interesting fossil of the coal form- ation, apparently either the terminal apex or first rudiment of one of the Bambusia?, whose striated stems are so abundant. The cast, either de- tached or embedded in the matrix, and composed of sand, or of the argillaceous carbonate of iron, occurs of various sizes, from one inch to several inches in diameter, and occa- sionally somewhat differing in form. Some persons, especially those who are disposed to regard as of the cacti family, those immense stems which are covered with pustular risings or depres- sions, have not scrupled to pronounce these fossils to have been flower-buds, resembling those of the recent cactus speciosissima ! This seems a purely fanciful hypothesis. A friend informed Mr. Steinhauer, that these casts very greatly resembled the appearance of the Surinam bamboo, immediately on its rising above 106 ORGANIC REMAINS. ground. On the other hand, Lindley and Hutton appear to consider them rather as the base or bottom of the stem whence the roots proceeded. Brongniart has appropriately named this fossil Catamites Stein- haueri, in commemoration of its original describer, an excellent man and ingenious Oiyctologist. The existence of antholithes, or fossilized flowers, has been generally doubted, on the ground that the succulent substance of the stamens and pistils must be too delicate to undergo the lapidifying or car- bonising process : but there exist impressions on shale and sandstone in the British Museum, on viewing which it is difficult to resist the conviction that they exhibit some kind of stellate blossoms. That casts of seeds, ears of wheat, barley, or other of the cereal grasses occur in the true coal formation, has also been denied. Seeds, however, do sometimes occur but probably in no instance com, notwith- standing the specious appearance of certain impres- sions to the contrary : indeed, it is asserted, that no trace of any glumaceous plant has been met with, even in the latest tertiary rocks, although we know that grasses now form a portion, and usually a very consi- derable one, of every Flora of the world, from New South Shetland to Melville Island inclusive.* The remains of the animal kingdom found in the coal and associate beds are less striking than those of vegetable origin. Fossil fishes have been dis- covered in the carboniferous group, as well in Scot- land as in this country specimens from the coal in the neighbourhoods of Leeds and Newcastle being preserved in the Museums of both those towns. The large remains found in the ironstone of Wardie, and * Fossil Flora, I. xiii. ANIMALS IN COAL STRATA. 107 in the coal fields of Greenside and Glasgow, and which were at first considered to be remains of saurian animals, are now determined by M. Agassiz and other Ichthyologists, to be true fishes. About the middle of the coal series in Derbyshire, or in the ninth bed of shale, reckoning in the ascend- ing order, a stratum of ironstone occurs, which is so full of different species of Mytili, &c. as to be dis- tinguished by the name of the muscle band.* There have been instances mentioned by various authorities of living toads found incarcerated in the coal strata: the fact of there ever having been in reality any such discoveries, is denied by Professor Buckland, who attributes the reports to mistakes on the part of pit- men, who having met with the animals in their work- ings, imagined them to have been dug out of the coal, without considering that they might but recently have entered the shaft. However tlu's be, and the supposition is more facile than sound, the learned * In the brown coal formation, which belongs to a more recent geological era than the true carboniferous group, animal remains are frequently found, especially in the lignitic deposits of the European continent. Mr. Lvell mentions that many entire jaws and other bones of an extinct mammifer, called by Cuvier Anthracotherium, have been found in the coal beds of Cadibone, the bone being itself changed into a kind of coal. In these beds, however, although comprising carbonaceous shales, and several seams of coal from two to six feet in thickness, no shells have been discovered, nor im- pressions of plants of which the species can be determined. The same au- thority also informs us, that near the valley of the Rhine, a tertiary forma- tion, called brown coal, from the association with it of beds of lignite worked for fuel, contains various organic remains, particularly fishes and frogs : they are found in a bituminous shale, called paper coal, from being divisible into extremely thin leaves. It may be mentioned here, as an interesting distinc- tion of the two groups, that while the vegetable matter which has been changed into the common coal, was until recently considered to have belonged exclusively to monocotyledonous plants of extinct species, all the distinguish- able remains of plants in the lignite and associated beds are said to belong to dicotyledonous trees and shrubs, bearing a close resemblance to those now existing in the country. 108 ORGANIC REMAINS. Professor's experiment shewing that toads died when confined without air or food in closely glazed stone cells, no more disproves the repeatedly alleged dis- covery of live toads in coal, than it does their ex- traction from blocks of marble, of which latter fact, at least, there does not appear to be any reasonable doubt.* In concluding this chapter, it may be interesting to mention that, at the beginning of 1833, some "Ob- servations on Coal" were read before the Philoso- pliical Society of Newcastle, by W. Hutton, Esq., from which it appeared that, on examining with the microscope one of those slices of coal in which Mr. Witham had discovered a distinct vegetable texture, the attention of the Author was excited by the re- markable appearance of several cells in that part of the coal where the texture of the original plant could not be distinguished. The coal of the New- castle district is considered by the Author to be of three kinds : the first, which is the greatest in quan- tity and the best in quality, is the rich caking coal so generally esteemed ; the second is cannel or parrot coal, or splent coal of the miners ; and the third, the slate coal of Jameson, which consists of the two former, arranged in thin alternate layers, and has conse- *The occurrence of living toads embedded, or rather entombed, in cavities of the deep strata has been adduced as a striking objection to the igneous theory of Hutton, and of course, as an equally striking testimony in favour of the hypothesis of aqueous solution, which commonly bears the name of Werner. Mr. Murray, the chemist, has remarked, that the lethargy of the toad and lizard may continue without the extinction of life for ages ; and both these animals have been found embedded in stone : " a toad," says this author, " was found under the coal seam, in the ironstone over which it rested, in a coal mine at Auchincruive, in Ayrshire." Toads have often been buried in garden pots, and found alive after long intervals. Mr. Jesse mentions an instance of a toad so buried, which at the end of twenty years was taken up much increased in bulk. CELLULAR TEXTURE IN COAL. 109 quently a slaty stnicture. In these varieties of coal, more or less of the vegetable texture could always be discovered : thus affording the fullest evidence, if any such proof were wanting, of the vegetable origin of coal. Each of the three kinds of coal, besides the fine distinct reticulation of the original vegetable tex- ture, exhibits other cells, filled with a light wine- yellow coloured matter, apparently of a bituminous nature, and so volatile as to be entirely expelled by heat before any change is effected in the other con- stituents of the coal. The number and appearance of these cells vary with each variety of coal : in the finest portions, where the crystalline structure, as in- dicated by the rhomboidal form of its fragments, is most developed, the cells are completely obliterated : the texture being uniform and compact, and the whole arrangement indicating a more perfect union of the constituents, and a more entire destruction of the ori- ginal texture of the plant. After describing these cells, and illustrating them by drawings, Mr. Hutton proceeds to speculate on their origin in the cannel coal : he considers it highly probable that they are derived from the reticular texture of the parent vege- table, rounded and confused by enormous pressure : moreover, that though the perfectly and imperfectly developed varities of coal generally occur in distinct strata, yet it is easy to find specimens which in the compass of a single square inch contain both varieties. From this fact, as also from similarity of position in the mine, the difference in the different varieties of coal are ascribed to original difference in the plants from which they were derived.* * London and Edinburgh Phil. Mag., April, 1833. CHAPTER VI. THE COAL FORMATION. Review of the arrangement of carboniferous strata, as forming coalfields, coal basins, and coal measures Arrowsmith's map of the coal districts Somerset- shire coal field South Gloucestershire or Bristol coal field Forest of Dean South Welsh coal field Shropshire field South Staffordshire and Warwickshire North Staffordshire North Wales Lancashire coal field Yorkshire, Nottingham- shire, and Derbyshire coal fields Whitehaven coal field Northumberland and Durham Unexplored localities in England Scotch coalfields Ayrshire Paisley Lanarksh ire East Lothian Culross Irish coalfields Districts of Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and Ulster Description of a coal basin 'Somersetshire and South Welsh basins Mantle, and inverted basin shapes Smiley s or small basins. W E have already adverted to the geological posi- tion of the carboniferous group of strata (vide p. 36), where it will also be seen that the terms used at the head of the present chapter are applied to one of those five general classes or suits, into which the ARRANGEMENT OF COAL STRATA. Ill whole known series of mineral beds may be compre- hensively resolved. The class of rocks here alluded to, and to which, for distinction's sake, the name of medial has been applied, range downward from the class terminating, as the case may be, with w r hat geologists term the upper or newer red sandstone, conglomerate or magnesian limestone, and contain not only the great coal deposit, but likewise the older limestone, or as it is sometimes designated from the organic remains embedded in it encrinal limestone, and the red sandstone, on which it reposes.* It may be remarked that the immense and diversified series of strata upwards, from the old red sandstone, constitute the region of vegetable remains, and to a great extent of the metalliferous deposits also. It is not, however, intended to mould the matter of the present Chapter into any systematic form, nor to make it the vehicle of any particular theory: the terms " Coal Formation," may, therefore, conve- niently be used to designate : I. Those generally insulated tracts of carboniferous strata, commonly known in this country under the appellation of " coal fields." II. The scope and inclination of the strata, deno- minated from their flexures, and occasional spherical formation, " coal basins ;" and III. The succession and order of strata, as dis- * It is an interesting fact, as connected with geological enquiries, that these depositions are not always found conformable with the underlying masses, as to parallelism of their surfaces. In some situations, the newer red sandstone fills up the superior inequalities of the subjacent strata, as if the matter which afterwards consolidated into the stone above named had, in the first instance, flowed over the previously contorted mountain limestone and coal measures, no disturbing force having subsequently been exerted to prevent the tranquil settlement and aggregation of the conglomerate. 112 THE COAL FORMATION. played in a vertical section, and called " coal measures." Of these three views of the coal formation, it may perhaps he remarked in addition, that the first is that which chiefly interests the topographer ; the second the geologist ; and, the third, the miner. The map, engraved by Arrowsmith to accompany the Report of the Coal Trade, printed by order of the House of Commons, in 1830, shews in a striking if not very precise manner, the geological position as well as the commercial distribution of the coal of England and Wales. But it must be recollected that in computing from the coloured areas on this map, the entire space is often erroneously taken as underlaid with coal ; for in most of the large fields, there are extensive tracts of barren or unascertained strata: this being the case, the districts afterwards described are rather given as those within which coal occurs, than as being entirely occupied by it. If, however, a person take an ordinary map of this portion of Great Britain, and draw a line from Wey- mouth, on the English Channel, to Jedburgh, on the Scottish Border, and then draw at right angles with that line, other lines, as follow: 1, on the west side, from St. Bride's Bay to Pontypool ; 2, on the east, from Wolverhampton to Atherstone ; 3, on the east, from Newcastle-under-Lyne to Cheadle ; 4, on the west, from Chester to Mold ; 5, on the east, from Huddersfield to Pontefract; G, on the west, from Whitehaven to Appleby ; such lines will intersect nearly every portion of coal district in England and Wales. It may be further remarked that, if another line, parallel with the former be drawn, from Gosport on the south to Guisebrough on the north side of the COAL FIELDS. 113 island, almost every portion of the true coal formation known to exist in Britain, will be found to lie on the western side of such line.* In describing these localities somewhat more in detail, we shall proceed from south to north ; and in this course, about eighteen miles from Bath, we ap- proach a curved tract, stretching perhaps twelve miles in length, and being about three miles over in the widest part ; this is the Somersetshire coal field. Proceeding onwards, we immediately come to the South Gloucestershire, or Bristol field : it lies to the east of the city just named, and may be said to be about a dozen miles in length, extending from the Avon northward, and three miles in average breadth. This is the nearest place to London at which coal has been found : and here, the strata dipping east- ward, pass beneath the red marl. Assuming that the Somersetshire coal measures, continuing to dip at the rate they do at Bristol, ultimately pass under the Metropolis, where wells have been sunk to the depth of 130 feet before reaching the sand, Mr. Phillips supposes f that "the strata of coal are more than two miles beneath the bottom of the clay" underlying * The coal formation in this country, lies generally in situations con- veniently accessible : and although this is not exactly the case in other parts of the world particularly in America, there is still much of truth in the speculation, which assumes that the rich and pleasant valleys, and low plains near the seas, and large rivers, were to be the habitations of the social and commercial, busy world of mankind ; and there the coals are found, perfectly convenient for home consumption, and for supplying the wants of others, by the great commercial high roads the waters. Had the coals been deposited in the bowels of the highest mountains, they would in a great measure have been useless to society, manufactures, and commerce. We could not con- veniently have carried the coals from the distant mountains nor have lived near them. The high mountains are too barren, too cold, and too far from the seas, for the residence of man in a social, commercial state ; but there is none, or very little of them there. t Geology, 219. I 114 THE COAL FORMATION. London. The hypothesis, however, upon which this vast eccentric clip and direction are calculated, is justly regarded as untenable. The next coal field is that of the Forest of Dean ; it is somewhat of an oval form ; the average diameter, six or seven miles. Directly west, of the last men- tioned deposit, and at a distance of less than twenty miles, lies the great South Welsh coal field, ex- tending from Pontypool on the east, to St. Bride's Bay on the West side of the Principality, and in- cluding the great iron works of Merthyr Tydvil. Mr. Martin, who has published a very exact survey of this formation*, states its length to be upwards of one hundred miles ; and the average breadth, in the counties of Monmouth, Glamorgan, Carmarthen, and part of Brecon, from eighteen to twenty miles, and in Pembrokeshire only from three to five miles : the broader and narrower portions are separated by Car- marthen Bay, which is about twelve miles across, taking the line of the coal field. Returning to the line first drawn, and still pro- ceeding northward, we next come to the Shropshire field, including Coalbrook Dale, and the Plain of Shrewsbury : these taken together, may make eighty or ninety miles of coal. North-east of the last tract, lies what may be called the South Staffordshire, or Dudley and Warwickshire field. The first basin of this coal, occupies a space between the towns of Stourbridge, Birmingham, Wolverhampton, and Walsal; and extending in a triangular form on a base line drawn between the two last named places, the hypotheneuse lying about midway between Lich- field and Penkridge ; and comprising altogether an * Phil, Trans. COAL FIELDS. 115 area of seventy or eighty square miles. The second basin occurs ten miles east of the preceding, and extends from Tamworth to Coventry, twenty miles ; the average breadth being about three miles. Be- sides the foregoing, there are coal measures, north- east and south-west of the town of Ashby-de-la- Zouch*, making together, at least thirty square miles f. What is called the North Staffordsliire, or Pottery coal field, consists of two sections, the eastward of which, surrounding Cheadle, and the westward in- cluding Burslem, may be said together to spread over about sixty square miles. Some authorities, however, have estimated the area of the field as com- prising from 40 to 50,000 acres of thick coal. The North Wales, or Flintshire field, thirty miles west of the last-mentioned, comprises, 1, a tract ex- tending from Wrexham to Hawarden, and thence, along the south-west bank of the river Dee, to the Irish sea : 2, a small section, stretching from Oswes- try towards Shrewsbury ; 3, a basin lying between the two preceding ; and, 4, in the Isle of Anglesey ; spreading together over at least one hundred and fifty miles. The great Lancashire coal field, stretching from Manchester to Colne toward the north, and from the former place to Liverpool toward the west, is of an exceedingly irregular form, and running out into vast branches, one of which extends from Ashton- * Mammet, after describing the range of the outcrop of the Ashby coal field, estimates the included area at not less than from 35 to 40,000 square acres. f The collieries on the Wolds near Ashby-de-la-Zouch, are worked on an extensive scale by the Marquis of Hastings, and also by some private indi- viduals. The depth of the pits is mostly from 300 to 360 yards. I 2 116 THE COAL FORMATION. imdcr-Line to Macclesfield. From the zigzag cha- racter of the outline of this field on Arrowsmith's map, it is difficult to compute the area of the whole : it cannot, however, be less than from four to five hundred miles, including an insulated portion at Hornby, near Lancaster. Eastward of the above, lie the important coal fields of Yorkshire, Nottingham, and Derbyshire, so called, as extending into those counties, but constituting one continuous extent of formation, stretching in length from Nottingham to Bradford, a distance of upwards of sixty miles in a straight line, and being on the average hardly less than eighteen miles in breadth. The Whitehaven coal field stretches along the eastern shore of the Irish sea, from beyond Egremont to Maryport, where it sweeps inland to Hesket, form- ing an arc with a chord of about thirty miles : the average width about four miles. We next come to the great northern coal field, extending into the counties of Durham and North- umberland, and containing those immense deposits of excellent coal, from which not only the metropolis, but a vast circuit of towns and villages on the coast from Berwick to Plymouth, are supplied with this species of fuel. In pursuing our prescribed course northward, we enter upon the southern extremity of this coal field a little beyond the Tees, at a place called Staindrop ; proceeding over it, nearly in the middle, we pass through Durham,* Chester-le-street, * " The colliery, or rather the three collieries in the neighhourhood of Helton, in the county of Durham, is at present," says Mr. Wynch, " the most important mining concern in this [the northern] coal field. These pits are said to be capable of working two hundred thousand Newcastle chaldrons of coals annually : they are situated about seven miles from. Sunderland, to the south-west, and the shafts are sunk through the magnesian limestone, which here covers the coal measures, and is twenty-six fathoms in thickness." COAL FIELDS. 117 Newcastle, Morpeth, and reach the opposite margin at Warkworth, on the little river Coquet, a distance of nearly sixty miles. Passing over an interval tract of about three miles, we again come at the coal, and pass over it through Alnwick and Belford towards Berwick, a distance of twenty-five miles, making in the whole an extent of coal field running for about eighty miles in one direction. From Berwick-on- Tweed to the estuary of the Tyne below South Shields, the coal extends along the coast-line, dipping, indeed, under the German Ocean. The figure of this im- mense coal field is very irregular : but the extent in a cross direction would be nearly passed over by taking the line of the Roman wall, which commences near North Shields, and proceeding in a westerly direction to Brampton, near Carlisle. The whole area of this district, as thus including the coal formation, lying under what is called at Newcastle " the west coun- try," as well as the more important measures sur- rounding that town, cannot be under fifteen hundred square miles. It is not by any means pretended that the forego- ing are precisely accurate definitions of the outlines, much less exact computations of the size of the vari- ous coal fields named; but merely, as before explained, loose sketches, derived from the delineations on Ar- rowsmith's map, and serving at once to shew the topographical bearings and proportions of the several districts, and, at the same time, to indicate how ex- tensive are the depositories of this valuable mineral in this island. Besides the tracts above indicated, there are various unexplored localities, which future research may add to our present coal fields : a highly interesting memoir on this subject, by the Rev. W. 118 THE COAL FORMATION. Conybeare, is printed in the Philosophical Magazine for 1834. Scotland contains some highly important coal fields, though occupying a comparatively insulated district ; there being at least seventeen counties either desti- tute of coal, or containing it only in such small quan- tities, or of such indifferent quality, as to be of little value. To these may be added, the Orkneys, the Shetland Isles, and even the Hebrides, though the latter contain traces of seams. Generally speaking, the coal strata are not found north of Saltcoates, or south of Girvan in Ayrshire, on the west coast ; nor north of St. Andrews, (except an inferior kind in Sutherlandshire*,) or south of Berwick, on the east coast ; so that these four points may be said to define the coal country in Scotland, stretching from S. W. to N. E. across the island, in breadth between thirty and forty miles f. In some districts the produce is very abundant : the whole of the south side of the county of Fife abounds in coal ; there are productive collieries at Saltcoates in Ayrshire, and in the vici- nity of Paisley in Renfrewsliire. Lanarkshire is fa- mous for an immense field of coal, underlying a tract of limestone, iron ore, and freestone. East Lothian, one of the most fertile counties in Scotland, which rests, for the most part, upon a bed of granite, also * It has elsewhere been intimated, that besides the true, or as it has been called the " Independent" coal formation, seams of an indifferent and appa- rently newer kind are sometimes worked above the magnesian limestone. As an exception to the generally limited size of- the deposits of this upper coal, may be mentioned that of Brora, in Sutherlandshire, alluded to in the text, and which stretches for several miles along the coast of Scotland. This deposit in which extensive workings have at one time or other been pursued during the last three centuries, is believed to correspond in geological position with the carbonaceous series of East Yorkshire, described by Mr. Phillips, as occurring between the lower oolitic and the cornbrash limestones. t Playfair's Scotland, vol. i. p. 174. SCOTCH AND IRISH COAL FIELDS. 119 affords abundance of excellent pit-coal : three consi- derable collieries are worked in the parish of Tra- nent, seven miles west of Haddington, the chief town of this county. Campsie, Baldemock, Kilsyth, and Larbert, are situated on the great Lanarkshire coal field, from which the celebrated iron-works on the river Carron are supplied with fuel ; nearly 200 tons of coal per day were consumed at these works some years ago. At Culross, a detached corner of the county of Perth, coal has been wrought for ages : these works, as they are among the most ancient, were also, at one time, the most considerable in Scot- land ; and an Act of Parliament, A.D. 1663, ordained that the Culross chalder should be the standard mea- sure for the kingdom. The following summary of the Irish coal fields is extracted from Mr. Griffith's admirable report on the Leinster coal district, and quoted by Conybeare and Phillips.* Coal has been discovered in more or less quantity in the following seventeen counties of Ire- land : Antrim, near Bally castle ; Donegal, north of Mount Charles ; Tyrone, in the Ulster coal district, and at Drumquin ; Fermanagh, a north continuation of the Connaught coal district, and at Petigoe; Monaghan, near Carrickmacross j Cavan, near Bel- turbet ; Leitrim, and Roscommon in the Connaught coal district ; Westmeath, near Atlilone ; Queen's County, Kilkenny, and Carlow, in the Leinster coal district; Tipperary, continuation of the same; and Clare, Limerick, Kerry, and Cork, in the Munster coal district. Of the four principal coal districts into which the island may be divided, viz., the Leinster, the Munster, the Connaught, and the * Introd. Geology, part i. p. 462. 120 THE COAL FORMATION. Ulster, the two former contain carbonaceous or stone coal the " slaty glance" coal of Werner ; and the latter bituminous or blazing coal. The Leinster coal district is situated in the counties of Kilkenny, Queen's County, and county of Carlow. It also extends a short distance into the county of Tipperary, as far as Killenaule. This is the prin- cipal carbonaceous coal district. It is divided into three detached parts, separated from each other by a secondary limestone country, which not only enve- lopes, but in continuation passes under the whole of the coal district. The Minister coal district, occupies a considerable portion of the counties of Limerick and Kerry, and a large part of the county of Cork. It is by much the most extensive in Ireland ; and in the neigh- bourhood of Kanturk, in the county of Cork, coal and culm have been raised for about a century. The formation itself is referable to one of the earliest periods at which the former mineral has been pro- duced, the true coal overlying the mountain lime- stone.* At Dromagh colliery, Mr. Griffiths was in- formed, the work had been earned to a considerable extent, and that the annual supplies of coal and culm materially contributed to the agricultural improve- ment of an immense extent of the great maritime and commercial counties of Cork and Limerick, which otherwise must have continued neglected and unreclaimed. In addition to setting forth the interest and importance of the tract just mentioned, the writer of the report entertained a hope that the time was not remote, when the great coal field on the left bank * Weaver on the Geological relations of the South of Ireland, in Jame- son's Edin. Joiirn. Oct. 1830. IRISH COAL FIELDS. 121 of the Black Water would be found to contain mine- ral treasure altogether inexhaustible. The Connaught coal district stands next in order, of value and importance, to those of Leinster and Munster, and possibly may be found to deserve the first place when its subterranean treasures shall be explored. At present little is known beyond the fact, that the outer edges of several beds of coal have been observed, but they have not been traced to any distance; so that their extent has not been ascertained. The coal is of the bituminous species, particularly adapted to the purposes of iron-works ; and the grey pig-metal made at the Arigna iron-works is reckoned among the best smelted in the empire. The Ulster coal district is of trifling importance when compared with the foregoing. It commences near Dungannon, in the county of Tyrone, and ex- tends, in a northern direction, to Coal Island, and in continuation to the neighbourhood of Cookstown. No beds of coal worth working have hitherto been discovered between Coal Island and Cookstown, but certainly the strata extend there. The principal col- lieries are at Coal Island and Dungannon, adjacent to the great basaltic area which characterises this portion of Ireland; the coal measures themselves being supposed to be identical with those that belong to the formations of the great central valley of Scotland. The coal of this district is bituminous. Besides the foregoing principal coal districts, there are others of less consequence. Bituminous coal has been found in the neighbourhood of Belturbet, in the county of Cavan, and at the collieries of Ballycastle, in the county of Antrim ; but the Antrim coal dis- trict is not very extensive, though the collieries have 122 THE COAL FORMATION. been wrought for a number of years. The coal is of a slaty nature, and greatly resembles both the coal and the accompanying rocks which occur in Ayrshire, and probably they belong to the same formation. The whole of the coal districts of Ireland, so far as Mr. Griffiths was aware, are those above mentioned ; trials have, however, been made at Slane, on the river Boyne, and also in the neighbourhood of Balbriggan and Rush. These trials were, however, on the edge of the district. Although coal is of very rare occur- rence, as well as of indifferent quality, in the county of Clare, Mr. Weaver suggests the probability of discovering valuable seams in the elevated regions of Mount Cullun, where, if coal should be found, the beds being nearly horizontal, it might be worked with advantage. From the foregoing account of the coal districts, it appears that very extensive tracts of coal country exist in Ireland ; but none, if we except the Leinster district, have been examined ; yet the Mun- ster coal district is in extent greater than any in Eng- land, and may probably contain inexhaustible beds of coal. We have already stated, towards the beginning of this chapter, that these immense mineral deposits are often, with reference to their internal figure, denomi- nated by geologists COAL BASINS. Recollecting that the beds or seams contained in a coal field, are not merely tabular masses, wliich lie evenly between their bounding planes, like a slab of marble, but in general, strata conforming successively to the scope of the hollow in which they are accumulated, it will be perceived that the edge or bounding line of each stratum must present itself at the surface, where denuded of the soil, appearing somewhat like the COAL BASINS. 123 concentric layers of an onion when cut in two : the edges of the coal and alternating beds being, how- ever, much less uniform in thickness and level. This " coming to the day," or appearance of the coal at the surface of the ground, is called by miners, the basset or outcrop, and serves, where it is exposed, to determine the form or size of the basin outwardly. These basins are generally elliptical, sometimes nearly circular, but are often very eccentric, being much greater in length than in breadth, and frequently the one side of the basin upon the narrow diameter, having a much greater dip than the other; which circumstance throws the trough or lower part of the basin much nearer to one side than the other.* From this view of an entire basin-shape, it is evident, that the dip is in every direction, and all the strata regularly crop out, and meet the alluvial cover in every point. The most complete and simple form of a coal field, with reference to its section, is the entire basin shape, which we have in some instances, without a dislocation. A beautiful example of this as seen at * Some recent geological writers have doubted the propriety of the term " basin," as generally applied to the coal and other deposits, on the ground that the containing area is much too rarely of any entire and regular figure to jus- tify the appellation. The immense hollows in which the carboniferous strata are commonly found accumulated, are supposed to have been lakes or valleys, into which, as mentioned in a preceding chapter, have been swept, under whatever circumstances, the gigantic vegetables originally growing in their vicinity. The celebrated vale of Clyde, in the county of Lanark the most famous Scotch coal country, is partly an immense basin, or rather trough, as the measures underlying the river, basset along both sides at a consider- able distance. And we recollect, on one occasion, to have heard the appella- tion of " coal basin," given to the bed of the German Ocean, on the ground that the carboniferous strata which dip eastwardly near the coast below Newcastle, are the same that are found descending in a contrary direction on the opposite shores of Belgium. It has been supposed that rich coal measures may pass under the British Channel. Fig. 13. |24 THE COAL FORMATION. Blaireugome, in the county of Perth, immediately adjoining the western boundary of Clackinannanshire, accompanies the observations* of Robert Bald, Esq. on the coal field of the last named dis- trict. Infy. 13. the elliptical line marked A B c D represents the crop or outburst of the lower coal, and the inner elliptical line the crop or bas- set of the upper coal : the converging darts indicating the dip of the measures towards the centre. Fig. 14. is a longitudinal sec- tion of the line A B ; w\A.fy. 15. the transverse section of the line c D; all the accompanying coal strata partake of same form and parallelism. The annexed cut, fy. 16., shews a section, by the Fig. 16. Fig. 15. c Rev. W. Conybeare, of a basin belonging to the Somersetshire and South Gloucestershire coal fields. It extends from the Mendip hills, indicated by the * Memoirs of Werncriau Society, vol. iii. p. 123. The communication of IT. Bald has furnished many of the remarks in the text above. SOUTH WELSH BASIN. 125 elevation at A, to the Wick rocks B; the great masses of both being old red sandstone. The stronger black lines shew the coal measures, and the others, the strata with which they alternate the lowest consist- ing of mountain limestone ; the next, millstone grit: the dotted portion is Pennant grit rock, the indenta- tion c at the right hand being a section of the bed of the river Avon which bisects the basin in the direc- tion of its shorter diameter into nearly equal parts. Above the higher lines of coal, the first horizontal stratum E consists of new red sandstone, upon which repose beds of what geologists call lias F: the middle portion here underlying the bifurcate section of Dundry hill D, consisting of oolite : both these last named accumulations are species of limestone, containing vast quantities of marine shells. The summit of Dundry hill is 700 feet above the level of the sea. It would be easy to give outlines and sections of various other basins in the British coal fields; but these, however interesting to the geologist, would afford but little gratification to the general reader, as they only differ in size and arrangement, and not in character, from those already noticed. The great South Welsh coal field, comprising an area of upwards of nine hundred miles, and being, as some one has remarked, in the form of a long- necked flask, was long supposed to exhibit a nearly perfect basin.* Later examination, however, has * The earliest writer who appears to have entertained any thing like a distinct idea of the arrangement and order of the coal strata, was George Owen, who, in 1570, left in manuscript a History of Pembrokeshire. He, however, seems to have been unaware of the subterraneous continuation of those beds, the superior outline of which he traced to a considerable distance, and which he improperly designates veins. " It is not, indeed, uncommon to find miners among the Welsh collieries, generally speaking, a very intel- ligent race of men, who have not yet become converts to Mr. Martin's idea 126 THE COAL FORMATION. enabled Mr. Conybeare to give the subjoined sec- tion which, instead of being nearly hemispherical, Fig. 17. as Mr. Martin had assumed, presents a rising of the measures on each side of the anticlinal axis A, fig. 1 7. It is from the basin shape, that all other coal fields are supposed to be formed, which are portions or seg- ments of a basin, or cavity of some kind, and have been produced by slips, dykes, or dislocations : these will form the subject of a separate Chapter. It may be here remarked, however, that the strata in many situations, instead of shelving generally from all parts of the superior circumference to the centre, or, as miners call it, the trough of the basin, sometimes occupy a vice-versa position, rising from the sides to the summit, and, as it were, overlying a cone within : in this case, the formation is said to be mantle-shaped ; or when the cone pierces the strata, and the crop appears, indicating divergency downward, this form of the coal measures is termed the inverted basin. These peculiar conformations, however, comparatively seldom occur : examples are to be seen in Scotland in the county of Fife, and in several districts of En- gland ; but even in extensive coal fields, the inverted basin-form is only a partial occurrence, or a devia- tion from what is conceived to be the general and ordinary form. Through the hill upon which Dudley of a Mineral Basin : to the same cause may probably be attributed the term gwythyen, or vein, universally given by the Welsh miners to a seam or bed of coal." INVERTED BASIN SHAPE. 127 Castle is built, canals have been cut for working the great beds of limestone : these beds occur in the lower series of the strata of the Staffordshire coal field, and, of course, are to be found at many miles distance from the Castle hill, and beyond the crop and outbursts of all the workable coal in the true basin-shaped part of the field ; at the same time, by this invested basin-form, these beds of limestone are elevated far above the level of the common surface of the country, and consequently above the level of all the coals. The numerous beds of coal, one of which is of the very great thickness of thirty feet, lie next the Castle hill, in a conforming situation with the beds of limestone, and as this hill is of an eliptical form, the coals are found all around it. There are also two other hills, which lie with it in a direct line through the coal field namely, Wrensnest hill, and Hurst hill. In the former, the same beds of lime- stone as those found in the Castle hill, have also been wrought to a great extent, by means of a canal cut through the hill, which gave Mr. Bald an opportu- nity of examining the internal form of the strata of the hill, which are described by him as being com- pletely mantle-shaped. This hill is also of an ellip- tical form, and the beds of coal with their accom- panying strata, lie all around it, conforming with the beds of limestone, cropping towards the summit of the hill. From the truncated figure of the top of the hill, which is now arable land, it would appeal', that at one time it had been much higher ; excepting where these hills occur, inverting the ordinary figure of stratification, the great Staffordshire coal field is of the true basin shape.* Besides those extensive accumulations of carboni- * Memoirs of Wernerian Society, iii. 148. 128 THE COAL FORMATION. ferous strata, there are sometimes found outliers obscurely attached to the main formation, or detached portions forming small basins, not more than a mile in diameter, and called in the West Riding of York- shire, Stvilleys. Seams of coal, inferior in thickness to those belonging to the Newcastle coal formation, and interstratified with the encrinital limestone, as well as with sandstone and shale, are spread over most parts of Northumberland ; but owing to these " landsale collieries" being generally inconsiderable in point of depth and extent of workings, the con- tinuity of the beds of coal has never been accurately ascertained. Sections of coal mines in this formation are to be found in the fourth volume of the Geological Transactions, where an account of Shilbottle colliery, which supplies Alnwick with fuel, is given : and in the Transactions of the Natural History Society of Newcastle, sections of the more important mines in the vicinity of Berwick-upon-Tweed are inserted. Mr. Wynch, from whose interesting papers these particulars are derived, gives a section of the colliery close to the old castle of Blenkinsop, 33 miles west of Newcastle. The deep pit at this place was 56 fathoms, and the viewer considered the position of the coal to be below the four fathom limestone, and above the great limestone of the Alston Moor mining field, and that the bed of coal was the same as that worked in the more extensive mines on Tynedale Fell. From these collieries Carlisle derives its coal.* The unexplored coal beds enveloped in the lime- stone, become important in considering the unre- solved problem of the extent and consequent duration of the northern mines. * Lond. and Edin. Phil. Mag. and Journal, Oct. 1833, p 274. CHAPTER VII. COAL MEASURES. Meaning of the terms " Coal Measures" Arrange- ment, contortions, and dislocations of strata Verti- cal section of a deep pit near Newcastle Tabular view of substances passed through Gosforth colliery Depth of the High Main Seam at Jarrow Sections of Mines at Dudley and Bilston Inequality in the thickness of matter occurring between certain Coal seams Tabular view of strata at Whitehaven Synopsis of Coal measures at Ashby-de-la-Zouch Staffordshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire, and York- shire coal fields Sheffield Section at Halifax Notices of the coal strata in South Wales, Scotland and Ireland Occurrence of iron ores in the coal formation. _D Y the term " measures," it is merely intended to designate the stratification of any particular coal dis- trict, comprising what belongs to the dip, thickness, and depth, and composition of the several solid matters exposed and raised in the progress of mining. It will be obvious that, on sinking a pit in any coal-field, consisting of cavities bounded in the manner described in the preceding chapter, the concentric beds, of 130 COAL MEASURES. whatever composition, might be expected to be met with more highly inclined, as the working takes place farther from the centre of the mineral basin, suppos- ing its form to be tolerably complete. The realiza- tion of tin's probability, however, will always depend very much upon the precise character of the local formation ; for, as the strata by upheaving or disloca- tion, may be thrown into a variety of positions, from the horizontal to- the vertical,* so the difficulty of judging from any data short of actual inspection, is proportionately enhanced. Mr. Conybeare, in speaking of the coal measures says, " the strata are generally inclined, and fre- quently at a very high angle, being entirely uncon- formable to those more horizontal beds which overlie them; they frequently also exhibit contortions as rapid and singular as those which occur in the tran- sition slate rocks below : appearances of this kind are displayed in a manner peculiarly striking on the coasts of Bride's-bay, Pembrokeshire, near Little- haven. It may be observed, that where the associated solid masses of limestone and sandstone are elevated in high angles, but still disposed in nearly regular planes, the more tender argillaceous beds are gene- rally twisted, and as it were crumpled together. The Mendip Hills and adjacent collieries in Somersetshire, afford an excellent illustration of tlu's fact, which strongly suggests the idea of a mechanical force which has elevated the more solid rocks en masse ; while * It is very uncommon to find the carboniferous strata thus highly in- clined; yet at a place called the Bank, betwixt Edmonstone and Niddry, noj very far from Edinburgh, about two miles south west from the sea, the strata are said to be in a perfectly vertical position ; pits of a considerable depth having some years ago, been sunk in a seam of coal from top to bottom, with, out going into the stone on either side, which, had the working been horizontal or nearly so, would have been the roof and the floor of the coal. DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. 131 the more yielding materials, giving way to its lateral pressure, have become irregularly contorted. These phenomena cannot be attributed to any internal power like crystallization ; for they appear to be common to all rocks, even those most decidedly mechanical in their structure. The faults, or as they may be most appropriately termed, dislocations of the coal fields and of which we shall treat in the next chapter are still more irresistible evidences of their having been affected by violent mechanical convulsions subse- quently to their original formation. These faults consist of fissures traversing the strata, extending often for several miles, and penetrating to a depth in very few instances ascertained ; they are accompanied by a subsidence of the strata on one side of their line, or (which amounts to the same thing) an elevation of them on the other ; so that it appears that the same force which has rent the rocks thus asunder, has caused one side of the fractured mass to rise, or the other to sink ; it being difficult, if not impossible to say (since in either case the disjointed masses would be the same) in which direction the absolute motion has taken place. Thus the same strata are found at different levels, on opposite sides of these faults, which appear to derive their name from their baffling for a time the pursuits of the miner ; they are also called traps, probably from a northern word signifying a step, and the elevation or subsidence of the strata is described as their trap up or down. The change of level occasioned by these dislocations sometimes ex- ceeds 500 feet ; whence we may infer the immense violence of the convulsion, which had power to pro- duce motions of such vast masses to such an extent. The fissures are usually filled by clay, which has sub- K 2 132 COAL MEASURES. sequently filtered in, and often includes fragments disrupted from the contiguous strata ; their direction usually approaches to vertical."* It will be at once apparent, from the preceding remarks, that the same beds of coal in sections of the same basin may be found at very different depths indeed, should the field in which they occur, besides possessing great sphericity of internal structure happen to be intersected by faults or fissures ; and, on the same account, it will be clear, that the details of one pit can rarely be taken as indicative of the depth to which it may be necessary to sink for coal in any particular district. It may indeed, exhibit generally the nature of the measures in any proximate portion of the same field ; and also, if the dip of the strata has been ascertained, it may afford in connexion with other circumstances, good criteria for determining the probable success of an adjacent shaft. To shew the various sorts of substances through which the northern miner has to pass before he comes at the object of his efforts, the following section of the strata, south of the main dike in Montagu Main col- liery, 3 miles above Newcastle, is taken from a well written article on the subject, f The numbers in the first column on the left hand form an index, from which it will be immediately perceived, where the same strata occur ; the second column contains the number of the strata ; the third the names of each ; and the fourth or numeral columns, express the thickness of each stratum in fathoms, yards, feet, and inches. It may also be premised concerning the five or six different classes of substances named, that whinstone is the hardest so hard indeed, that * Introd. Geol. Part I. p. 348. f Reos's Cyclopaedia, art. Coal. SECTION AT NEWCASTLE. 133 angular fragments of it will cut glass, and affording an excellent material for roads : post-stone is a very hard kind of freestone, of a fine, homogenous tex- ture ; it is this stone wliich has been worked for centuries for grindstones, in various situations about Newcastle, especially on Gateshead Fells, where it crops out : and also at Heworth shore, on the Dur- ham side of the Tyne, where the most valuable quarries are situate. Sandstone is a freestone of a coarser grain than the last, and pervious to water ; it does not occur in the locality of the following section, but is found under the limestone, sometimes of considerable thickness twenty fathoms or more ; metal stone is a hard argillaceous stratum, solid, compact, and interspersed with nodules of iron ore, and pyrites ; shiver bleas, or black metal, as the pit- men call it, is a sort of tough shale, often interlaid with lamina of spar coal, or other matters. Particulars of the Strata. Thickness of each Stratum. Fa. Yds. Ft. In. 1 Soil 0010 2 Clay 2020 1 3 White post 026 4 Coal 0004 2 5 Black metal stone 0102 3 6 Grey post 1120 4 7 Blue metal stone 2 1 1 3 8 Grey post 2 000 t 9 Strong white post 2 100 3 10 Grey post 1 1 511 White post, with black metal part- ings 5000 3 12 Grey post 1 4 6 13 Brown post, with coal pipes 1 1 8 114 White post 2 1 7 15 Ditto, mixed with whin 1 Carried over 22 1 134 COAL MEASURES. Tarticulars of the Strata. Thickness of each Stratum. Fa. Yds. Ft. In. Brought forward.. .22 1 16 Coal . 6 2 17 Black metal stone , 4 1 8 18 Grey metal stone , , 4 2 9 19 Brown post,jvith skamiy partings.. . 1 1 20 Coal 9 8 21 Grey metal stone , 1 1 2 10 10 22 Coalf , 1 9 11 23 Band> BENWELL MAIN 6 10 24 Coal) , 1 8 25 , 1 1 1 26 . 2 1 1 12 27 Whin 2 I 28 White post , , 1 2 29 Coal 1 8 2 30 , 1 1 1 31 White post , 3 2 32 4 1 8 33 Grey ditto 5 2 4 13 34 Ditto post, with whin girdles , , 2 1 1 35 Strong white post 6 2 8 36 3 2 37 Coal 8 14 38 Post girdles 2 8 39 Grey metal stone 1 1 15 40 COAL, BEAUMONT SEAM 1 4 16 41 Strong white thill 1 7 1 42 Ditto, ditto, post 2 4 43 Coal 1 6 17 44 Black thjll 2 4 8 45 Grey metal stone 1, 3 46 Ditto post 2 8 47 Ditto metal stone 2 10 1 48 Strong white post 1 4 49 Coal j 3 2 50 Black metal stone 2 4 1 51 White post 1 8 18 52 Blue metal stone, with post girdles 1 Carried over 76 008 SECTION AT NEWCASTLE. 135 Particulars of the Strata. Thickness of each Stratum. Fa. Yds. Ft. In. Brought forward. ..76 008 19 53 White post, with whin girdles. 2 1 9 2 54 Black metal stone...., O 1 5 3 55 Grey post 1 2 4 56 Blue metal stone 100 1 57 Strong white post 0013 4 58 Blue metal stone 1021 59 Coal ,.. 0008 17 60 Black thill 1 4 1851 Blue metal stone, with post girdles 1010 3 62 Grey post 100 1 63 Strong white post 3126 2 64 Black metal stone 1 20 65 COAL, Low MAIN 2 11 8 66 Grey metal stone 4 1 167 White post 2 1 21 68 Grey metal stone, with post girdles 1000 19 69 White post, with whin girdles 3 016 21 70 Grey metal stone, with post ditto... 0110 22 71 COAL, Low Low MAIN* 2 10 8 72 Grey metal stone 0120 1 73 White post 0020 8 74 Grey metal stone 1 8 2 75 Black metal ditto 10 876 Grey ditto ditto 1026 3 77 Ditto post 1006 19 78 Strong white post, with whin girdles 3118 8 79 Grey metal stone 3026 3 80 Post ditto 0020 1 81 White post 0120 8 82 Grey metal stone 1 83 Coal 0006 8 84 Grey metal stone 1 21 85 Ditto, with post girdles 3022 86 Coal ..0005 Carried over 116 1 2 3 * This is what is called, in the Hetton Colliery, the "Hutton Seam," from the name of the individual who first attempted to win the excellent coal of which it here consists, and which lies at the great depth of 147 fathoms. 13fi COAL MEASURES. Particulars of the Strata. Thickness of each Stratum. Fa. Yds. Ft. In. Brought forward... 1 16 1 2 3 8 87 Grey metal stone 0004 3 88 Ditto post 1016 7 89 White ditto, mixed with whin 2104 8 00 Grey metal stone 0010 91 Coal 0003 2 92 Grey metal stone, with post girdles 1006 19 93 Strong white post, with whin ditto,., 0125 122 1 2 3 Iii looking- over the foregoing details, it is impos- sible not to be struck, first, with the great number of beds of various matters interstratified with the coal, amounting to nearly one hundred successive sedi- mentary depositions of different matters, and exhi- biting various degrees of induration.; second, with the thinness of the layers of coal, at the point of intersection the Beaumont seam alone reaching a yard in thickness ; while the stratum of the Low Main is under two feet, and that of Benwell Main only six inches: and, third, the depth of the section itself is remarkable, being upwards of one hundred and twenty-two fathoms, or two hundred and forty-five yards. The above section of strata, however, is inferior in every respect to the details obtained in the sinking of a shaft at Gosforth colliery, about two miles north of Newcastle, which was finished in October, 1827. In this work, the number of strata sunk through reached one hundred and forty-one, the total depth being upwards of one hundred and eighty-eight fathoms, forty-three seams of coal were pierced, many of thorn, as in the section above, very thin. DEPTH OF HIGH MAIN COAL. 137 Mr. Wynch, from whose interesting paper* these particulars are derived, remarks that " the section of this mine is peculiarly interesting in a geological point of view ; not only from the great number of strata passed through, but owing to the shafts by winch the coal was won being sunk on the south side of the main dyke, and the coal obtained by a drift driven due north through it." This mode of coming at the coal is understood to have been adopted for the purpose of avoiding the water supposed to be accu- mulated in the rents and fissures of the strata towards the north, while the coal-field on the south side of the dyke, was known to have been drained by the Heaton and other engines, to the dip of the Gosforth mine. At St. Anthony's colliery, about three miles below Newcastle, they find the High Main coal, (not dis- tinguished in the preceding section,) at the depth of seventy-six fathoms, and measuring exactly one fathom in thickness f : atone hundred and thirty-five * Contributions to ihe Geology of Northumberland and Durham, Lond. and Edin. Phil. Mag. July, 1833, p. 28. f The High Main coal occurs in the Manor Wallsend colliery, near South Shields, at the depth of 125 fathoms : it there consists of five layers the second and fourth consisting of bands of coal of an inferior quality, making together 1 fath. feet, 5 inches. This deterioration of the stratum is called the Heworth band, as it commences in the workings of the colliery of that name. Mr. Wynch remarks that, viewers or professional men have long been aware, " that from the neighbourhood of Heworth, the High Main coal, the very best seam on the Tyne, or even in the north of England, became injured as it proceeded in a south easterly direction, by being inter- mixed by a band of coal of inferior quality with an admixture of strong matter and iron pyrites." Owing to the intervention of the band above named, an opinion was long prevalent that no mine could be worked with profit near or under the magnesian limestone formation. " I am not aware,'' adds Mr. Wynch, " that the limestone was ever thought to be the direct cause of rendering the coal of inferior quality : but one thing was certain, that whenever the collieries on the south side of the Tyne extended their workings in the direction of the limestone hills, the Heworth band was sure to injure the coal." 138 COAL MEASURES. fathoms the Low Main coal is found upwards of a fathom thick. Jarrow, about five miles from the mouth of the Tyne, and on its southern side, is the spot beneath which the bituminous beds in the coal- measures in this neighbourhood are found at their greatest depth ; the High Main stratum is 960 feet below the grass at Jarrow, and rises on all sides ; but as the dip of the strata (which averages one inch in twenty) is not uniform in every part of the surround- ing district, that bed does not rise to the surface at equal distances around that place. Mr. Conybeare, from whose statement these particulars are derived, goes on to remark that as the High Main coal rises to the surface of the alluvial soil, around Jarrow, we may conclude that the beds of it above and below the High Main arise also at a distance from it, propor- tionate to their depth beneath it. These beds, and the other strata composing the coal measures, are not every where of uniform thickness, but occasionally enlarge or contract so greatly, that it is only by an extensive comparison of the whole series, that any certainty is arrived at concerning that general uni- formity of stratification which is known to exist.* Mr. Bald has given in the Memoirs of the Wer- nerian Society, a section, and Messrs. Conybeare and Phillips, in their Introduction to Geology, a table of the coal and associated beds, as occurring at Dudley in Staffordshire. From this table we see that the distinguished by different names in this coal in T,. n , K... Hi.,. S,c. SECTION AT DUDLEY. 139 formation, but consisting most of sandstone, and a sort of clay shale, provincially called clmich, amount to sixty-five, and that its whole thickness is 313 yards, 1 foot, and 3 inches, or about 156 fathoms, somewhat more than the depth of the High Main coal at Jarrow. There is another particular, how- ever, in which the South Staffordshire collieries differ most strikingly from those on the Tyne : the main coal, which is the great object of the colliers in the former country, is about 60 ^ fathoms below the sur- face in the neighbourhood of Dudley, ten yards in thickness: about thirty yards below it, lies another bed five yards thick. The beds of coal are eleven in number five above, and five below the main coal ; none of the former are considered worth working. The ten-yard, or main coal, which is of a slaty tex- ture, consists, in fact, of thirteen different laminae, which were thus distinguished in Dr. Plott's time some of the terms being still in use about Dudley : Ft In. 1 Roof floor, or top floor 4 2 After a parting of four inches of soft, dark earth top slipper, or over slipper 2 2 3 Jays 2 White stone (Patchel) 1 4 Lambs 1 5 Tough Kitts, or heath 1 6 6 Benches 1 6 7 Brassils, or corns 1 6 Fool coal parting (sometimes only.) Thickness 13 9 8 Foot coal, or bottom slipper 1 8 John coal parting 1 inch. 9 John coal, or slips, or veins 3 Hard stone, 10 inches or less. 10 Stone coal, or long coal 4 Carried over,,,,,. 8 8 140 COAL MEASURES. ft. In. Brought forward... 8 8 11 Sawyer, or springs I 6 12 Slipper 2 6 Humphrey parting. 13 Humphreys, or bottom bench or in fray floor ., 2 3 14 11 13 9 Total Main Coal 28 8 Of these different beds, the upper one, or roof floor, is generally left to support the earth and chinch above it; the second, third, and fourth beds, which together are called the white coal, are reckoned the best for chamber fires. Next to them in goodness are reckoned the eleventh and twelfth beds; after them, some the eighth, ninth, and tenth. The toughs and benches are preferred for making cokes ; and are generally reserved for the furnaces : they do not kindle and flame so vividly as the foregoing, but they give a more durable and stronger heat. The part of the brassil measure which contains pyrites, is generally laid aside, or used for burning bricks or lime : the humphrey being the lowest portion, is cut away to let those above fall down, and, therefore, most of it is reduced to small coal or slack. The beds dip towards the south, and rise towards the north ; so that at Bilston the main coal crops out and disappears altogether. The strata in the mines at Bradley, near Bilston, are noted by Pitt as follows : Depth. No - Strata. 1 Surface soil j "Q 2 Clay and ratch "' ' 9 Carried over 10 6 SECTION NEAR BILSTON. 141 No. Strata. Depth. Ft. In. Brought forward... 10 6 3 Clunch 2 6 4 Ironstone 2i 5 Clunch 2 6 Ironstone 2 7 Soft clay 2 8 Dark batty chinch 3 9 Gray jointy rock 4 10 Ironstone H 11 Rock-binds with ironstone 4 12 Soft parting 1 13 Strong black rock 4 14 Dark clunch 7 15 Ironstone 5 16 Dark clunch, with ironstone 5 17 Ditto, fuller of ironstone 10 18 Soft clay 1 8 19 Batt ..". 2 3 20 Brooch coal 3 6 21 Fireclay 4 22 Black ironstone 1 23 Black earth 1 6 24 Ironstone 2 25 Black earth and ironstone 1 6 26 Ironstone 1 5 27 Rock-binds, with ironstone 10 28 Dark earth, with ironstone 6 29 Rock-binds, with ironstone 9 30 Peldon 4 31 Grey rock 23 32 Dark clunch 2 To the Main Coal HO 5 33 White coal 3 34 Tow (or tough) coal 2 3 35 Benches and brassils 4 6 36 Foot coal 2 3 37Slipbatt 2 3 Carried over 14 3 142 COAL MEASURES. No. Strata. Depth. Ft. In. Brought forward... 14 3 38 Slips 2 3 39 Stone coal parting 4 40 Stone coal and patchells 4 6 41 Penny coal 6 42 Springs and slippers 4 6 43 Hnmfrybatt 4 44 Humfries 2 3 Main Coal Stratum 28 11 Upper Stratum 110 5 Whole Depth 139 4 Of the above named strata, the surface soil is a gravelly loam : No. 2, is generally rubbish, but in some places the clay will make brick ; No. 3, chinch, a mouldering argillaceous schistus, of no value, which falls into a dark coloured powder ; No. 4, and some other layers of ironstone, as may easily be con- ceived, will not pay for getting, unless incumbent or appendant to some other useful strata which are got for use; the rocks, No. 9 and 31, are of no particular value, except to mend roads and for burr walls ; No. 20, brooch coal, is useful, and sometimes got ; the thicker strata, Nos. 15, 16, 17, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, are got as far as they will pay for getting ; No. 30, Peldon, contains nodules of hard, basaltic, durable stone, too hard to cut, and of no use except for rough walls, or to mend roads, or for pavements. Of the strata 33 to 34, the white coal is very good for general use ; the tow coals and brassils are esteemed for furnaces ; the others are of various value. At Catchems' Corner, near Bilston, a pit has been sunk, to the depth of 366 feet 8 inches, and piercing INTERVENING DEPOSITS. 143 sixty-three strata; nine of these being useful coal lying below the main seam, and forming collectively a thickness of 28 feet 1 inch. Besides which there are seven strata of good ironstone. Mr. Conybeare mentions a very curious phenomenon as occurring at Bloomfield colliery, south of Bilston : the two upper beds of main coal, called the roof floor and top slipper, separate from the rest, and are dis- tinguished by the name of the flying reed: this separation at Bradley colliery amounts to twelve feet, four beds of shale, slate clay, and ironstone being interposed. This cuiious intervention seems to indicate that the different beds of which the main coal consists, were deposited at different times.* A similar deviation from uniformity in the thickness of an intervening layer occurs in the Yorkshire coal field: at Sheffield, one of the beds which is about seven feet in thickness, includes a parting called the clod, which is six inches thick, and requires to be thrown out on getting the coal ; passing, however, in a zig- zag line northward, this band of dirt enlarges ris- ing above the base like a hill until at Chapeltown, five miles off, it has become 20 yards thick, the divided stratum, being here, of course, worked and designated as two beds. At Silkstone, near Barns- ley, this striking accumulation of non-inflammable matter, has shrunk to its first mentioned dimensions as a mere dirt band in the workable seam of the Sheffield coal. According to a statement in Townshend's "Vindi- ciae Moses," the Cumbrian coal fields have been but partially explored : at Howgill, west of Whitehaven, seven beds have been wrought, and the workings * Introd. Geol. part i. p. 412. 144 COAL MEASURES. carried more than one thousand yards under the sea, and about six hundred feet below its bottom, the strata still dipping westward, at a considerable angle.* The following is an exact account of the different beds of coal, their deptli below the surface, dis- tance between eacli other, and thickness of each bed, in the old King pit, situated about 700 yards to the west of Whitehaven, near the sea shore. The top of this pit is elevated twenty-seven fathoms, one yard, and seven inches, above the level of the sea: 1st bed... 2nd bed.. Distance between the beds. V';ith. 15 12 Thickness of each bed. Fl '10 (i Remarks. 1 10 An inferior kind of coal. 1 6 Ditto, yet saleable. Between the second and third beds are seven thin seams of coal. 3rd bed.. 81 I II 53 Mixed with several impu- rities. Then follow three thin seams. 4th bed.. 101 20 Some layers are very pure, others much mixed wi ferruginous earths. A thin bed of coal, after which 5th bed.. 1 121 1 |i 20 | || 12 | | Very fine coal. Then follow four thin seams. 6th bed.. 1 147 | || 26 | |1 2 | | Ditto. After three thin seams, occurs the with and other 7th bed. . 1 II 18 A little inferior in quality, but yet very inflamma- ble, f * Thwaite Pit, in the Howgill colliery, which w the sixth bed of coal, was formerly supposed tc England. t Brownrigg's Literary Life, p. 12o. sunk 149 fathoms to be the deepest pit in SECTIONS OF STRATA. 145 At Whiugill, north-east of Whitehaven, the beds are from four to ten feet in thickness, and dip one yard in ten : in the depth of 165 fathoms they work seven large beds, and have noticed eighteen thin ones. At Preston How, they cut fourteen beds of coal before they met with one at all considerable, but the fifteenth bed proved more than five feet in thick- ness ; and the seventeenth, separated from the former by twenty-four beds of slate, ironstone, sandstone, and one thin seam of coal was nearly eight feet in thickness. There are some considerable mines in Warwickshire, at Griff and Bedworth ; at the former place, four beds of coal are worked, the depth of the first being 117 yards, and the principal seam nine feet in thickness ; the works of the latter place are on the same bed, but here the first and second coal seams of Griff run together, and constitute one five-yard seam. A section of the Ashby coal-field, at the village of Donisthorpe, as given by Mr. Mammett, presents us with ninety-three alternations of strata included in a depth of 475 feet, or nearly 79 fathoms. There are five beds of coal of different qualities, and averag- ing about three feet in thickness, occurring at inter- vals above the " main" and " nether" coals, which are in contact, and together fourteen feet in thick- ness. At Moira colliery on Ashby Wolds, the floor of the main coal lies at the depth of 744 feet ; and in the Hastings' pit, more towards the middle of the basin, the main seam, of which the upper half alone is at present wrought, reposes on a stratum of fire clay about 1000 feet below the surface. The beds alternating with the coal, are mostly in different sandstones, ironstone, bind in different stages of in* 140 COAL MEASURES. duration, and a valuable] fire day. About Burslem, in the north of Staffordshire, where several pits are wrought in what is sometimes called the Pottery coal field thirty-beds of coal have been noticed ; they are, in general, from about three to ten feet in thick- ness. One of the beds, forming part of the South Lancashire field, and worked near Manchester, is a four feet coal. It would be improper to pass over without more particular notice, the measures of the great York- shire and Derbyshire coal field, wlu'ch, in the opinion of Mr. Conybeare, rivals or even surpasses in im- portance that of Northumberland, with wlu'ch it so closely agrees in the direction, inclination, and character of its strata, that it has been considered a re-emergence of the same beds from beneath the covering of maguesian limestone, which conceals them through so long an interval.* According to Mr. Farey, j- the carboniferous group of this extensive and important district, consists of about twenty gritstone rocks of different kinds, in- cluding within their planes of parallelism, at fewest twelve seams of workable coal, but probably more, with their accompanying shales and beds of nodular or other ironstone. The same author has given a list of about 500 collieries in work upon these seams m 1811, or that had been worked there in former years. Those pits particularised were, for the most part, situated in Derbyshire or Yorkshire ; many of them had been carried on for a long period antecedent to the above date, and several are not yet abandoned: of course, a considerable number of new works have * Introd. Geol., p. 378. t Agricultural Survey of Derbyshire, vol. i. 181. DERBYSHIRE AND YORKSHIRE. 147 been established in this vast field, during the inter- vening twenty years. Of the pits in the list adverted to, of wliich the seams into which they were sunk are distinguished, the first seam contained 59 pits ; the second, 77 : the third, 25 ; the fourth, 5 ; the fifth, 3 ; the sixth, 1 ; the seventh, 6 ; the eighth, 28 ; the ninth, 23 ; the tenth, 20 ; the eleventh, 8 ; and the twelfth, 24 pits. As the measures dip mostly from west to east, and as the foregoing num- bers, indicative of succession of strata, are reckoned from the lowest to those above, the former, or lowest members alternate with the millstone grit forming the bold mountain scenery west of Sheffield, while the latter pass beneath the magnesian limestone which extends in a lofty ridge to the east of that town. The vicinity of Rotherham is distinguished by a remarkable and thick soft salmon-coloured grit stone, conspicuously reddening the arable soil, and which Mr. Farey supposed to be identical with number six- teen of his series. The principal vicinal seams of coal, at present worked for the supply of the impor- tant manufacturing town of Sheffield, in addition to pits at Birley Moor, in the tenth seam above indicated, are five in number, lying between the before men- tioned salmon-coloured grit, or as it is locally termed " Rotherham red rock," and the Wortley sandstone : the latter, overlying another series of beds associated with the millstone grit above mentioned. Taking the strata in the descending order, the first to be mentioned is the Tinsley Park coal, which consists of an upper seam four feet in thickness ; and at a depth of 13 fathoms lower down, occurs another seam 27 inches thick, of dull stony aspect, very hard, and called from the use to which it is largely applied, L 2 148 COAL MEASURES. Furnace coal. About 20 fathoms still lower we come to what is locally termed the High Hazles seam, consisting of seven layers of different appear- ance and qualities, and making together a thickness of about a yard and a quarter. Fifty fathoms below the bottom of the last mentioned, lies the Handsworth seam, four feet six inches in thickness, and exhibiting eight distinct laminae, technically known as tops, bright, best bright, top hards, dead bed, black hards, spire hards, and pricking coal : the four varieties preceding the last named, are largely in demand by the furnace men employed in converting steel. The lowest portion of this seam, where wrought at Atter- cliffe, yields a vast quantity of the variety called cannel coal, being of a fine homogeneous texture, excellently adapted to the purposes of the turner, for which it has been fetched to Birmingham ; and also affording on distillation abundance of gas, Sheffield having at one time been exclusively illuminated by the gas evolved from it. One hundred fathoms below Handsworth bed, we come to the Manor seam, five feet in thickness, and divided into fifteen distinct layers, including two of soil. Under this, after a ban-en interval of fifty-five fathoms, comes what is called the Sheffield bed, six feet in thickness, and presenting six or eight varieties of coal, some of them abounding with pyrites, and occasionally pro- ducing near the top a beautiful and compact kind of cannel, or as it is called in Yorkshire, branch coal. The measures dip rapidly towards the east, the basset or outcrop of most of the seams being traceable in the vicinity of the town ; two or three acres of the last mentioned coal being, as elsewhere noticed, denuded in one part by the formation of new streets. CANISTER COAL SERIES. 149 Iii 1832, Mr. Phillips, one of the Secretaries of the British Association, communicated to the York- shire Philosophical Society, a paper on the lower, or gauister coal series of Yorkshire, containing some remarks on the fossil productions of the strata, and which have been noticed in a previous chapter. The writer defines tin's series by saying that it is included between the millstone grit of Bramley beneath, and the flagstone of Elland above, having a thickness of about 120 or 150 yards, and inclosing, near the bottom two thin seams of coal, one or both of them workable, and several other layers scattered through the mass, too thin to be worth working. The most regular and continuous bearing of all these coal seams, is stated to be, in a few places, of the thickness of 27 or 30 inches, but is generally only about 16 inches. The coal here alluded to is that occurring in the second and third of Farcy's seams indicated above : it is worked at several places near Leeds, Bradford, Halifax, and Sheffield. The following is a section of Swan Banks Colliery, near Halifax, as furnished to Mr. Phillips, by C. Rawson, Esq. of the latter place ; and is said to present a good idea of the general character of the whole of this lowest coal series. Yds. Ft. In. Ragstone, (the lower part of the Ellaud flagstone) 27 Black shale 40 Coal (80 yards band coal) 006 Rag 400 Black shale 28 Coal (48 yards band coal) 11 Grey shale 020 Black shale 7 1 3 Dirt band (black tough clay) 003 150 COAL MEASURES. Yds. Ft. In. Black shale 4 l Jj Coal (36 yards coal band) ( 7 Galliard l Black shale 12 Ra 2 and shale 13 Black shale 700 Shale and ironstone (called hard band), flat bamn pots Grey shale (called White Earth), with small round baum pots containing Ostrea ? 1 Concretions (called baum Pots), with Am- monites, &c ! Black shale (called Moon Bassett), with Pectens 1 Coal (the hard band coal) worked 023 Seatstone 1 Seat earth (white clay), with vegetable fossils 200 Grey shale ". 500 Black shale 4 1 6 Coal (middle band coal) 010 Middle band stone 1 1 Black shale 800 Layer of fresh water shells ( Unio ) 1 Black shale 3 1 Ironstone 3 Black shale 008 Coal (the soft bed coal) workable 015 Upper millstone grit, on which Halifax stands. In the above, and another section through similar substances, adduced by Mr. Phillips, " we observe," says this intelligent geologist, " besides the very re- markable layers of marine shells*, several occur- * The undoubted occurrence of marine shells has been complacently ap- pealed to by those who incline to the notion of a diluvial rather than a lacustrine origin of our coal deposits. So far, however, as the presence of characteristic testacea goes, the evidence, if not equal, is not in favour of the former theory : for example, at a late annual meeting of the Geological Society, Mr. Prestwick described a heterogenous assemblage of plants and shells, both of fresh and salt-water species, as occurring in the carboniferous strata of Coalbrooke Dale ; and on the same authority, that Mr.Murchisson has found at Fontcrburg and elsewhere on the opposite side of the Severn, STRATA IN SOUTH WALES. 151 reuces of a peculiar hard siliceous sandstone, called Galliard, Ganister, or Seatstone (according to local custom, or slight differences), which in fact is the same thing as the ' crowstone ' of the mountain lime- stone district in the north-west of Yorkshire, and like that contains in abundance the remains of plants, particularly of the genus Stigmaria, Brong. By the extreme abundance of plants of tin's kind, indeed, the galliard beds may almost always be recognised throughout their range in Yorkshire. Tin's stone, in some cases, forms the floor or sill of the coal seams, a circumstance never observed in the upper coal strata, amongst wliich, indeed, galliard never occurs in its true character. Hence this whole group of strata may be appropriately called the Galliard or Ganister coal series." * The coal measures of the great South Welsh basin are on a magnificent scale, both as to extent and thickness : the depth at which the miner reaches the different strata varies greatly, depending upon the situation of the pit. The principal part of the coal lies under Glamorganshire, and here the strata are found from 5 fathoms to 6 or 700 fathoms deep ; though in 1806, Mr. Martin states, it had not been found necessary to pursue these strata deeper than about 80 fathoms. There are 12 distinct seams of coal in tin's immense mineral depository, from 3 feet to 9 feet thick each ; which together make 70j feet : a band of compact limestone between two beds of coal, " resembling the lacustrine limestone of central France, and containing fresh-water shells." Some authors, in order to account for the mixture of these different shells, have had recourse to the gratuitous notion of a series of reciprocating inun- dations of salt and fresh water: ingenious experiments have likewise been instituted, to shew the possibility of habituating marine testacea to live in fresh water, and those of our lakes to exist in the sea. * Phil. Mag. and Journ. of Science, Nov. 1832. p. 352. 152 COAL MEASURES. and there are 11 more, from 18 inches to 3 feet, which make 24 i feet ; besides a number of smaller seams from 12 to 18 inches, and from 6 to 12 inches in thickness, not calculated upon. The average length and breadth of the different strata of coal are computed at about 1000 square miles, containing 95 feet of coal in 23 distinct strata, which will produce, in the common way of working, 100,000 tons per acre, or 64,000,000 tons per square mile. The coal at the east end of the basin, from Pontypool to Hir- wain Furnace, is of a coking quality ; from thence to Bride's Bay, at the opposite extremity, the strata yield stone-coal, or culm ; on the south side of the basin, the coals are principally of a bituminous, or binding quality.* Some of the coal fields of Scotland contain seams of surprising thickness : in Clackmannanshire, where exists the north-east boundary of the Scottish coal district, the beds alternate with a great variety of other strata. In the main coal field, the formation has been examined to the depth of 704 feet ; with some exceptions, the stratification exhibits great re- gularity, the layers being in many instances very thin. There are 142 alternations of strata, including 24 beds of coal ; these beds or seams are from two inches to five feet in thickness, six of them being three feet or upwards, amounting together to 59 feet 4 inches. The principal bed is at the depth of 120 yards; and the coal is of the cubical and slaty varieties ; sometimes both sorts occurring together, but no blind or glance coal. It is all what is called open burning coal, having little or no tendency to cake. In the Johnstone coal field, near Paisley, the * Phil. Trans, vol. 96. p. 315. SCOTLAND AND IRELAND. 153 upper stratum of rock is compact greenstone, above 100 feet in thickness, not in conforming position with the coal strata, but overlying ; then a few fathoms of soft sandstone and slate-clay alternating and uncom- monly soft. Under this, in one place, there are no fewer than ten beds of coal lying one immediately over the other, with a few divisions of dark coloured indurated clay. These beds of coal are in thickness, no less than 1 00 feet : this, Mr. Bald remarks, is a mass of combustible matter in the form of coal, pro- bably unparalleled in the world. The largest seam of the Trauent collieries, near Haddington, is said to be nine feet thick. Of the coal strata, in Ireland, we have few parti- culars. Lord Greenock* has pointed out that the appearance of the carboniferous series in Arran, and at Cambeltou, in Kintyre, as well as the indications of its existence at Ballycastle, and other places on the Irish coast, within the prolongation of the lines above named, as indicating the Scottish lowland coal district, seems fully to establish the geological con- nection in this, as well as in most other respects, between the west of Scotland and the north-west of Ireland. In the Dromagh colliery, in the Munster district, as we learn from Mr. Griffith, all the beds hitherto discovered have been successively and suc- cessfully wrought : four of these beds incline on each other at no greater distance than 200 yards. The first is a three feet stone coal, and is the leading bed. All the faults, checks, and dislocations similar to those which are discoverable in this bed, are in general to be encountered in the other three; the names of the four beds are, the coal bed; this lies Before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, December, 1834; Jameson's Journal, April, 1835, p. 38 i. 154 COAL MEASURES. further to the north ; the rock coal, so called from its being comparatively of a harder quality than the other beds ; the bulk bed, so called from its contents being found in large masses or bulks ; and Bath's bed, so called from the name of a celebrated English miner, by whom it had been many years ago dis- covered and worked ; the coal bed consists of three- feet solid coal, and is not sulphureous ; the rock coal is nearly of the same thickness with the leading bed, but is very sulphureous, and having the soundest roof is the most easily wrought. The other beds are of the culm species, but of peculiar strength : each barrel of culm having been ascertained to burn from nine to ten barrels of the lime of the district. The bulk bed forms, as already stated, immense masses of culm, in which the miners have frequently been un- able to retain the ordinary direction of roof and seat. No work in tin's district has been carried deeper than eighty yards, as in the Dromagh colliery, where the coal is heavily watered, and the consequent expen- siveness of working is very considerable. The occurrence of the argillaceous carbonate of IRON, either in the form of nodules or of continuous beds, in immediate connexion with the coal seams, is a circumstance of immense importance, as lying at the foundation of the manufacturing superiority of this country. In South Wales, Staffordshire, York- shire, and other parts of the United Kingdom, par- ticularly in Scotland, the proximate abundance of coal and ironstone has led to the establishment of those immense smelting works, upon the success or deterioration of which such such vast outlays of capital, and the industry and happiness of so many thousands of individuals depend. It is not necessary in a work, the object of which ORE$ OF IRON. 155 is not statistical, to particularise the succession and locality of the ironstone strata, as for the most part, they are found wherever the coal formation occurs. In some cases, the one is sparingly, in others most abundantly interspersed in the carbonaceous group. In the great South Welsh coal field, immediately upon the millstone grit, which overlies a mass of mountain limestone, 85 fathoms in aggregate thick- ness, reposes a thick series of shale beds, alternating with thin bands of hard sandstone. The first visible or lowest seam of coal, occurring in this shale is two inches thick : a few fathoms above this seam there occur from fourteen to sixteen beds of ironstone, nine of which are visible at the surface ; they are em- bedded in shale, and occupy a perpendicular depth of 13 to 14 fathoms, continuing their range to the eastward; these are the principal beds from which the supply of ore for the Welsh iron works is pro- cured. According to Mr. Forster,* these ores yield about 26 per cent, of iron; there are several other beds iuterstratified with the different seams of stone coal. The mines in the Forest of Dean furnish a curi- ous stalactite, rich in iron, and termed brush ore, from its being found hanging from the tops of caverns in stria? resembling a brush. The Lanca- shire ore is very ponderous, of a lamellated texture, and of a dark shining purple or bluish colour. The rich Cumberland ore resembles in colour the last mentioned, while its polished surface seems to consist of congeries of various sized bubbles, as if the mass had once been in a state of ebullition.f Besides the * Observations on South Welsh Coal Basin in Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Newcastle, vol. i. p. 100, a highly interesting account. f Lardner's Cab. Cyclopaedia, " Manufactures in Metal," vol. i. p. 33. A very elaborate and interesting investigation of the composition of the 156 COAL MEASURES. valuable deposits of argillaceous iroii ore which, ex- isting in immediate contact with most excellent coal, have given to Wednesbury so distinguished a place among the iron manufactories of tin's kingdom, may be added the occurrence of a peculiar species of the ore called Blond metal, and which after being smelted, is used for the making of a variety of tools. The coal in this neighbourhood, is reckoned the best in the kingdom for the smith's forge : it is found in beds of from three to fourteen feet in thickness. Wolverhampton, another extensive manufacturing town in this county, owes its celebrity to the favour- able position in which it is placed with reference to subterranean riches, and inland navigation. Situated nearly in the centre of the kingdom, in the midst of the most productive coal and iron mines, and having a free and easy access to the great rivers Thames, Severn, Trent, and Mersey, by means of the dif- ferent canals which surround it, every opportunity is afforded of conveying and receiving materials and merchandise.* argillaceous carbonates of iron, from which by far the greatest proportion of our British iron is smelted, is printed in Brewster's Edinburgh Journal for 1827 8, from the pen of Dr. Colquhoun. * Pitt's Staffordshire, p. 171. CHAPTER VIII. DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. Common occurrence of fissured strata Lonff mire's theory of veins, dykes, rents, slips, fyc. How cha- racterised Up-throw and down-throw dykes Sec- tion of fractured coal measures at Jarrow Enor- mous disturbances produced by faults Great trap dyke of Yorkshire and Durham The ninety -fathom dyke of Northumberland The seventy-yards WJiin dyke The "great Derbyshire denudation" of Fa- rey Nonconformity of overlying and subjacent masses Supposed igneous origin of trap or basaltic dykes Advantages of those dislocations misnamed "faults " Professor BucklamVs observations. ALTHOUGH several allusions have already been made to the subject of this Chapter, it is of too inte- resting a nature, in every point of view, to be merged in merely incidental notices. From what has been said already, it will have appeared, that besides the divisions of strata into different substances, often re- peated after certain intervals, and generally extend- ing in parallel series, variously inclined through the coal measures, there are certain fissures or fractures often nearly vertical, stretching through the whole 158 DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. mass in a very singular manner, and betokening a violent upheaving or subsidence, and consequent separation of formerly continuous or adjacent portions. These rents, which every one must have remarked on a small scale in almost every stone quarry, and wliich traverse the coal formation in every district, are not only striking objects of inquiry to the geolo- gist, but of vast importance in mining operations ; and although generally termed faults, they are in reality of immense benefit in our colliery operations. In the " Annals of Philosophy" for the year 1815, there is an elaborate essay on the shapes, dimensions, and positions of the spaces in the earth which are called Rents, and the arrangement of the matter in them, by Mr. J. B. Longmire, of Kendal. The ob- ject of the writer is to prove that metallic veins, dykes, slips, and other rents, in the internal part of the earth, were formed when it was passing from a fluid to a solid state, and are owing to an unequal contraction of its matter ; and that the phenomena of stratification and formations, in some points of view, as well as the features of the earth at its surface, are effects of the same cause. Most of these fissures, particularly those supposed to have been the earliest formed, appear to have been filled by some of the matter at their sides being forced into them while yet in a fluid state, by the pressure of the superin- cumbent mass : others appear to have been filled with matter that, at a later period, entered them either in a fluid state, as greenstone, basalt, &c., or in a solid state, as gravel, sand, and clay, generally mingled with fragments of the adjoining strata. The mineralogical compounds of the first class, varying in character from the distinct granitoidal crystalliza- MR. LONGMIRE'S THEORY. 159 lion of their original base, to the compact basalt, ex- hibiting but obscure traces of granular texture, are frequently met with in these subterranean clefts, as well as connecting with the various strata in over- lying or proximate masses, and sometimes even in- tervening the earth. These masses, denominated by geologists trap rocks, and which are generally allow- ed to be of volcanic origin, have afforded no small portion of the ammunition which has been expended in the disputes between those who assign an aqueous, and those who contend for the igneous, formation of the strata composing the present cnist of our planet. But, to return to rents : these spaces are divided by Mr. Longmire into ovalar, cylindrical, straight and bended-tabular shapes. These latter are the most ordinarily .occurring dislocations, and when found to contain earthy tabular masses, and metallic and earthy crystals, are known by the appellations of slips, dykes, shifts, lodes, troubles, and faults. They are denominated slips, by some geological writers, be- cause the strata on one of their sides have slipped from those on the other, and fallen below them. They are known at Whitehaven and elsewhere by the name of dykes, because they divide the seams, or bands of coal, as they are sometimes called, into fields ; and they are called up-throru or doivn-throm dykes, as the edge of the strata appears to an observer to be higher or lower in regard to his own position. They are called shifts in some parts of England and Scotland, as they are considered by the majority of miners in these parts to have shifted the strata on their sides. In Cornwall, they are denominated cross lodes, or, when round or ovalar, pipe veins ; and in some parts of the kingdom they are called 100 DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. troubles, or faults, from their troubling, or putting to fault, the pitmen ; or the latter term may have arisen from the supposition that the rents have been occa- sioned from something faulty in the aggregation of the matter of the rocks themselves. The subjoined diagram, which will strikingly illustrate the disloca- Fig. 18. tions in question, is from a splendid section, on a large scale, presented by Mr. Buddie to the Natural History Society of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in which neighbourhood (at Jarrow) the portion of coal mea- sures thus singularly broken up, occurs. We mentioned in the preceding Chapter, that the change of level in the same strata sometimes exceeds 500 feet. This amazing dislocation, indeed, appears almost trifling, when compared with the great south slip in the Clackmannanshire coal field, which, ac- cording to Mr. Bald, throws down the strata no less than 1230 feet; the north slip in the same field throwing it down 700 feet. These fissures extend from the surface of the strata, or rock-head, some- tunes to an unknown depth ; they vary in width from a fraction of an inch to four or five yards, or more. Their descent is sometimes nearly vertical, but more UP-THROW AND DOWN-THROW DYKES. 161 commonly they are oblique; the north slip above mentioned makes an angle with the horizon of about 60 degrees. The Saltom north dyke, near White- haven, has been ascertained to descend more than 55 yards in an angular direction. It may be interesting to remark, that, however naturally it might have been expected that where subterranean disturbances had been effected on so vast a scale, the surface of the ground should exhibit some corresponding indica- tions, this is found not to be the case ; and even im- mense beds of mail, limestone, &c. sometimes overlie these dislocated tracts, presenting no traces of frac- ture. Indeed, not only do the alluvial and solid coverings often bear no relation to the dip or disrup- tion of the subjacent strata ; but it frequently happens that the ground over some very considerable disloca- tions appears remarkably level and undisturbed. Although up-thrown and donm-thronm, as being relative terms, convey no precise idea when used generally, yet there is a sense in which they are practically understood by pitmen ; for with regard to slips in coal fields, we find there is a general law connected with them as to the position of the dislo- cated strata. Suppose a slip is met with in the course of working horizontally in a mine if, when looking at it, the vertical line of the fissure forms an acute angle with the line of the pavement upon which the observer stands, we are certain that the strata are tin-own downwards upon the other side of the slip. On the contrary, if the angle formed by the two lines above mentioned is obtuse, we are certain the strata are thrown upwards on the other side of the fissure. When the angle is 90 C , or a right angle, it is altoge- ther uncertain whether the dislocation throws up or M 162 DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. down on the opposite side of the slip. When what are commonly called dykes intersect the strata, they generally only separate the portions, without any dislocation either up or down ; so that if a coal seam is intercepted by a dyke, it is found again, by run- ning a gallery directly forward, corresponding to the angle or inclination of the coal with the horizon.* It is justly observed by the author of an interesting work,f that one of the most remarkable features on a geological map of England is the line of the great trap dyke from beyond Cockfield Fell, in Durham, to the Smeaton Moors in Yorkshire, a distance of sixty miles, inclosing throughout its length a sub- terranean wall of basalt varying from thirty to sixty feet thick. This dyke, the longest known, resembles in composition and appearance, and is supposed to be united towards the west with, the " Great Whin Sill," or basaltic formation of Upper Teesdale. There are several considerable dislocations of strata in the coal fields of Northumberland and Durham ; the most celebrated of these is called the Main, or Great Dyke, or Ninety-fathom Dyke. The latter name has been given to it because the beds on the northern side are 90 fathoms lower than those on the southern side of it; its underlie is inconsiderable. In some places its width is not great ; but in Mon- tagu colliery it is 22 yards wide, and is filled with hard and soft sandstone. This dyke is visible in a quarry at Cullercotes, a little to the north of Tyne- mouth ; from whence it traverses the coal strata in the direction of N.N.E. and S.S.W. past Crawcrook, a distance of sixteen miles, and probably passes into the formations underlying the coal measures. From * Memoirs Wern. Soc. vol. iii. p. 134. f Phillips' Geol. Yorks. p. 179. SECTION OF WHIN DYKE. 163 the southern side of this dyke, two others branch off, one to the S.E., the 'other to the S.W. The latter is called from its breadth the Seventy-yard Dyke, and, like the main one, is filled by a body of hard and soft sandstone : it intersects the upper seam of coal, which it appears is not thrown out of its level by the interruption. The seam, however, de- creases in thickness from the distance of 15 or 16 yards ; there the coal first becomes sooty, and at length assumes the appearance of coke a phenomena un- known, except in the vicinity of basaltic dykes. The south-eastern branch is only 20 yards in breadth.* Fig. 19. The above diagram exhibits a section of the great slip as it cuts a portion of the coal field near Newcastle ; and also of the intersecting Whin Dyke, the central portion of which consists of basalt, sixteen feet in thickness. A A. The Ninety-fathom Dyke, of unknown depth. B B B. The Whin Dyke, extending underground in an undu- lating course, from Coley Hill, G, in a N.W. direction to Simond- side, towards the S.E., beyond the right extremity of the diagram, a distance of about eleven miles. C C. The High Main coal. D D. The Low Main coal. E E. The Beaumont seam. F F F. Level of the river Tyne. H. Benwell colliery. K. Newcastle town Moor. Mr. Farey has described -f a striking arrangement * Introd. Geol. parti., p. 376. f Phil. Trans. 1811. p. 242. M 2 104 DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. of faults, extending into the counties of Derby, Staf- ford, Nottingham, Chester, and York, and surround- ing in its largest scope an immense tract, within which two other portions are successively still farther raised, the innermost immediately surrounding the town of Bakewell, which indeed is situate towards the centre of this singularly lifted district. As the strata thus raised have also become, owing to various causes, completely exposed or uncovered in high situations, the whole tract, from the county in which the greater part of it lies, has been designated by Mr. Farey " the great Derbyshire denudation." This phenomenon, let it be remembered, presents no ano- maly as viewed in connection with the statement previously made relative to the non-coincidence of the alluvial covering with the displacement of sub- jacent strata. In Somersetshire, coal measures, highly inclined, lie beneath, and are concealed by, horizontal beds of red marl ; and in the same country great faults, which elevate the coal seams seventy yards, produce not an inch of displacement in the superincumbent matter. And examples are well known in Yorkshire, where inclined coal measures are covered by nearly horizontal magnesian lime- stone, which is unbroken by the vast dykes and faults in the subjacent coal.* As might be expected, the basaltic rock, when occupying these fissures, has, on account of its extreme hardness, been less wasted by diluvial and atmospherical changes, than the softer strata which bound it j and, therefore, in some places it appears above them in a long crust or ridge, or ranges along the moors like an ancient military road, and even in some places stands up in a lofty wall.f * Phillips' Geology of Yorkshire, p. 15. f Ibid. PROOFS OF IGNEOUS ACTION. 165 The contents of these fissures, as already noticed, comprise not only mixed matters evidently the detri- tus of the strata through which they pass, but sand- stone, and the more peculiar formations of basalt and toadstone, to which it seems difficult to deny an ig- neous origin, or to doubt that it has been ejected from below, or forcibly intruded into the strata.* It must be added, however, that these latter substances are not unfrequently accompanied in the coal measures with very unequivocal traces of the operation of fire. In most instances the edges of strata, where the faults cut them, are affected in density at least, and gene- rally the rocks, or those portions of them adjacent to trap dykes, have assumed a greater degree of indura- tion; loose grits have passed into compact quartz rock, and clay or shale into flinty slate, or in some instances into a compact substance called porcelain Jasper. The coal is found completely charred, or converted into coke, of an ash-grey colour, and po- rous, having the fracture, and in other respects re- sembling that produced by distillation in close vessels at the gas and coal-tar works. In Northumberland, one working exhibits the coal thus affected at a spot where it is 18 feet thick on one side, and 9 feet tliick * As the Whin Dyke, previously described, does not pass through the Beaumont coal seam, Mr. Buddie, from whom the particulars are derived, considers that this and other facts shew it to be an exception to the generally received opinion, that whin dykes have been formed by the basalt in a state of fusion having always been forced upward through the fissures, in the stratification from below, and that they extend to an indefinite depth. It is also doubtful whether those basaltic fissures, which occur in various parts of the Newcastle coal field, run through the strata in uninterrupted and conti- nuous lines. Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. Newcastle. 1830. Mr. Hutton considers HighTeesdale to mark, as it were, a centre of volcanic action, from a crater in which the basalt of the great dykes of Durham and Yorkshire may have flowed, as they appear to spring from hence as from a focus, which had con- tinued in activity at different periods up to one even beyond the consolidation of the oolitic series. Trans. Nat. flist. Soc. Newcastle, ii. 212. 166 DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. on the other side of the dyke, which is here filled with a vein of basalt 13 feet thick. At Cockfield Fell, in Yorkshire, where the coal near the dyke is converted into a black substance like concreted soot, " in the stratum above the cinder a great deal of sulphur is sometimes found, in angular forms, of a bright yellow colour, and very beautiful." It may be farther re- marked, that the sandstone adjoining this substance is found changed to some depth to a brick-red colour; and even limestone is often rendered highly crystal- line, and unfit for lime, when in the vicinity of this rock. " Dykes," says Mr. Conybeare, " are an endless source of difficulty and expense to the coal-owner, throwing the seams out of their levels, and filling the mines with water and fire-damp. At the same time they are not without their use ; when veins are filled, as is often the case, with stiff clay, numerous springs are dammed up, and brought to the surface ; and by means of those dykes which throw down the strata, valuable beds of coal are preserved within the field, which would otherwise have cropped out, and been lost altogether. Several valuable beds of coal would not now have existed in the country north of the main dyke [above described], but for the general de- pression of the beds occasioned by that chasm." * We shall close the present Chapter by an eloquent passage from the Inaugural Lecture published by Professor Buckland, in which that learned geologist adverts in a striking manner to the beneficial bearing in the economy of the earth, of those numerous dis- locations so generally misnamed faults, of which we have been treating. After adducing some of those * Introd. Geol. part 5. p. 377. BUCKLAND ON FAULTS. 167 various illustrations in proof of admirable contrivance in the structure of the globe, with which investiga- tions into its fossil and mineral contents bring us acquainted, the Reverend expositor proceeds : " Thus Geology contributes proofs to Natural Theology strictly in harmony with those derived from other branches of Natural Histoiy ; and if it be allowed, on the one hand, that these proofs are, in this science, less nume- rous and obvious, it may be contended, on the other, that they are calculated to lead us a step farther in our inferences. The evidences afforded by the sister sciences exhibit, indeed, the most admirable proofs of design and intelligence originally exerted at the Cre- ation : but many who admit these proofs still doubt the continued superintendance of that intelligence, maintaining that the system of the universe is earned on by the force of the laws originally impressed on matter, without the necessity of fresh interference or continued supervision on the part of the Creator. Such an opinion is indeed founded only on a verbal fallacy ; for ' laws impressed on matter' is an expres- sion, which can only denote the continued exertion of the will of the Lawgiver, the Prime Agent, the First Mover : still, however, the opinion has been entertained; and perhaps it nowhere meets with a more direct and palpable refutation, than is afforded by the subserviency of the present structure of the earth to final causes ; for that structure is evidently the result of many and violent convulsions subsequent to its original formation. When, therefore, we per- ceive that the secondary causes producing these con- vulsions have operated at successive periods, not blindly and at random, but with a direction to bene- ficial ends, we see at once the proofs of an overruling 168 DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. Intelligence continuing to superintend, direct, modify, and controul the operation of the agents which He originally ordained. " Examples of this kind are perhaps nowhere more strikingly afforded than in the instance of those frac- tures or disturbances called faults, which occur in the alternating heds of coal, slaty clay, and sandstone, which are usually associated under the name of coal measures. The occurrence of such faults, and the inclined position in which the strata composing the coal measures are usually laid out, are facts of the highest importance as connected with the accessibility of their mineral contents. From their inclined posi- tion, the thin strata of coal are worked with greater facility than if they had been horizontal ; but as this inclination has a tendency to plunge their lower ex- tremities to a depth that would be inaccessible, a series of faults, or traps, is interposed, by which the component portions of the same formation are ar- ranged in a series of successive tables, or stages, rising one behind the other, and elevated continually upwards towards the surface from their lowest points of depression. A similar effect is often produced by undulations of the strata, which give the united ad- vantage of inclined position, and of keeping them near the surface. The basin-shaped structure, which so frequently occurs in coal fields, has a similar ten- dency to produce the same beneficial effect. " But a still more important benefit results from the occurrence of faults or fractures, without which the contents of no deep coal mine would be accessible. Had the strata of shale and gritstone that alternate with the beds of coal been continuously united with- out fracture, the quantity of water that would have ADVANTAGES OF FAULTS. 169 penetrated from the surrounding country into any considerable excavations, that might have been made in the porous grit beds, would have been insuperable by the powers of the most improved machinery : whereas, by the simple arrangement of a system of faults, the water is admitted only in such quantities as are within controul. Thus the component strata of a coal field are divided into numberless insulated masses or sheets of rock, of irregular form and area, not one of which is continuous in the same plane over any very large district, but each is separated from its next adjacent mass, or sheet, by a dam of clay impe- netrable to water, and filling the narrow cavity pro- duced by the fracture which caused the fault. " If we suppose a thick sheet of ice to be broken into fragments of irregular area, and these fragments again united after receiving a^ slight degree of irre- gular inclination to the plane of the original sheet, the united fragments of ice will represent the appear- ance of the component portions of the broken masses, or sheets, of coal measures we are describing, whilst those intervening portions of more recent ice by which they are held together, represent the clay and rub- bish that fill the faults, and form the partition walls that insulate these adjacent portions of strata, which were originally formed like the sheet of ice in one continuous plane. Thus each sheet or inclined table of coal measures is inclosed by a system of more or less vertical walls of broken clay, derivative from its argillaceous shale beds at the moment in which the fracture and dislocation took place : and hence have resulted those joints and separations, which, though they occasionally interrupt at inconvenient positions, and cut off suddenly the progress of the collier, and 170 DISLOCATIONS OF STRATA. often shatter those portions of the strata that are in immediate contact with them, yet are in the main his greatest safeguard, and indeed essential to his opera- tions. The same faults also, whilst they prevent the water from flowing in excessive quantities in situa- tions where it would be detrimental, are at the same time of the greatest service in converting it to pur- poses of utility, by creating on the surface a series of springs along the line of fault, which often give notice of the fracture that has taken place beneath. It may be added also, that the faults of a coal field, by inter- rupting the continuity of the respective beds of coal, and causing their truncated edges to abut against those of uninflammable strata of shale or grit, afford a preservative which prevents the ravages of acci- dental fire from extending beyond the area of that sheet in which it may take its beginning, but which, without the intervention of some such a provision, might lead to the destruction of entire coal fields. " It is impossible," concludes Drt Buckland, " to contemplate a disposition of things so well accommo- dated, and indeed so essential to the various uses which the materials of the earth are calculated to afford to the industry of its inhabitants, and even to the supply of some of their first wants, and entirely to attribute such a system to the blind operation of fortuitous causes. Although it be indeed dangerous hastily to introduce final causes, yet since it is evi- dent that in many branches of physical knowledge, more especially those which relate to all organized matter, the final causes of the subjects with which they are conversant form perhaps that part of them which lies most obviously open to our cognizance, it would surely be as unphilosophical to scruple at the ADVANTAGES OF FAULTS. 171 admission of these causes when the general tenor and evidence of the phenomena naturally suggest them, as it would be to introduce them gratuitously unsup- ported by such evidence. We may surely, therefore, feel ourselves authorised to view, in the geological arrangement above described, a system of wise and benevolent contrivances prospectively subsidiary to the wants and comforts of the future inhabitants of the globe, and extending itself onwards, from its first formation through all the subsequent revolutions and convulsions that have affected the surface of our planet." CHAPTER IX. BORING AND SINKING. Relative Views of the Miner and the Geologist in searching for Coal Extent and localities of car- boniferous strata mostly ascertained Superficial indications of Coal Examination by boring Description of boring apparatus Interesting nature of the search after mineral treasures Sizes of pits Windlass used in commencement of sinking Walling inside the shaft Tubbing -Blasting with gunpowder Description of the horse gin Ex- pensiveness of sinking deep pits Pemberton's shaft at Monktvearmouth Adits or drifts. HAVING disposed of the Natural History and geological relations of coal, we now come to treat of its obtainment by means of human industry. How- ever attractive coal might have been or may be con- sidered, as a mere fossil, to scientific enquirers into the nature and formation of the earth, it is mainly to considerations connected with its importance as the most valuable species of fuel, that we owe our so large and generally accurate acquaintance with its properties and situation. For, let the zeal of the geologist be what it may in pushing scientific hives- SEARCHING FOR COAL. 173 tigations over various countries to a great extent, or to whatever depths in the earth on a given spot, the practical self-interest of the collier will rarely fail to surpass it in exploring any locality where coal is likely to he found. These parties, indeed, are not commonly found proceeding in concert, at least, the latter has only heen induced of late years to defer to the former in reference to strictly untried ground ; and perhaps the advantages which would arise from the working of thick seams of good coal, sufficiently account for the many unsuccessful attempts to dis- cover them. " The opinions of working colliers on this point," observes Mr. Phillips,* " have too often been preferred to the legitimate deductions of science; and even yet persons will perhaps be found willing to credit the delusive tale of finding good coal by going deeper." Formerly, the absurd and arbifrary notion that coal might be found any where in this Island by only sinking deep enough, prevailed to a considerable extent. Men of the present generation residing in or about London, may have heard their grandmothers gravely assert that coal might be raised from under Blackheath, and other equally unlikely places, were it not that Government did not allow the search lest the discovery might interfere with that " nursery for seamen," the coast coal trade ! It is allowed by experienced geologists, that workable coal may here- after be discovered in some new situations or at great depths ; as, for instance, covered by magnesian lime- stone or red sandstone, or beneath the lias, as the coal measures of Durham and Western Yorkshire, appear in some instances to run under these sub- * Geology of Yorkshire, p. 182. 174 BORING AND SINKING. stances ; but this is very uncertain. Indeed, within the last thirty years, there has been disseminated such accurate and extended knowledge of the state of the coal districts, and of the associated strata of the island generally, as to render it much less probable that unknown seams exist to any great amount, than might have been supposed at an ante- cedent period. Before the publication of the geo- logical map of England by Mr. Smith, and of another by Mr. Greenhough, to say nothing of various local surveys, there existed hardly any general information on this subject ; and an opinion, as already stated, prevailed, that coal might be found, at certain depths, almost as certainly in one county as in another. But the experience of scientific observers, as Dr. Buckland remarked, in his Evidence before the House of Commons, who have united the results obtained from their own observations with the con- clusions of practical men, shews that we now know almost minutely the extent of all those districts in which coal can possibly exist in England.* In those situations where the outcrop of the coal has been bared, either accidentally or by natural causes, or in the vicinity of well known coal fields, the chances of meeting with seams may, in most * It does not appear that the virgula divinatorum, or divining rod, at one time in such estimation with our tin and lead miners, was ever in use among the colliers of this country, though to its use has been attributed the disco- very of coal in France. " This kind of coally stone," says Schoock after Guicciardin, was discovered in the district of Liege, A.D. 1189, by a certain pilgrim, who, when he had pointed them out by a divining rod to a smith, suddenly disappeared ; afterwards they began to be dug in great abundance." Morand tells us, in his Memoirs sur le Cfiarbon de Tcrre, that the person who in the country of Liege first discovered them, is called " Prudhomme le Houilloux," or "leVeillardCharbonnier,"HullasusPlenevallium"; that is, " the collier or blacksmith of Plenevaux," a village within two leagues and a half of Liege. , INDICATIONS OF COAL. 175 cases, be easily calculated. In the districts on the Tyne and Wear, not only are sections of coal-basins exposed in the sides of vallies, but the basset-edges of the measures used formerly to be broken up in considerable quantities by the wheels of carts passing over them. In the Yorkshire coal-field, the out- burst of the coal may frequently be noticed ; and there may at this time be seen in the western suburb of the town of Sheffield, so large a surface of coal uncovered during the making of one or two new streets, that not only were the bricks of which many of the houses have been built, made of clay got out of the cellars, and burnt with the coal dug on the same spot, but the latter, although of a tender and indifferent quality, continues to be sold and carted away in considerable quantity. To persons remote from the colliery districts and, indeed, to many others, the appearance of an acre or two of coal lying exposed in situ on a level with the street, must be a novel sight. It is only, however, in some situations, and under particular circumstances, that denuded strata present themselves ; hence, one chief difficulty which arises in exploring a country in search of coals, or even where coal fields are known to exist, arises from the great thickness of alluvial cover, which completely hides the crop or outburst of the strata, termed gene- nerally by miners the rock-head, from our view, and also completely conceals the fissures, dykes, and dis- locations of the strata, which produce such material alterations in the coal fields, and are frequently the occasion of great loss to the mining adventurer. The alluvial cover has been compared, in reference to the strata which exist underneath, to the flesh upon the 176 BORING AND SINKING. bones in animals : if the flesh is removed, the whole structure of the bones, their situation and connection, are at once discovered ; in the same manner, were the alluvial covering removed, the whole strata would be distinctly seen, and the effect of every dislocation immediately ascertained. But, however the total re- moval of the alluvial cover might, in one view, ap- pear to be of great advantage, as affording facility in ascertaining the mineral contents of any district, yet this convenience would be greatly outweighed by the disadvantages, not only in the loss of soil at present available for purposes of cultivation, but likewise in consequence of the strata being denuded, the coal- mines would be deluged during every rainy season ; whereas the alluvial cover affords protection, by caus- ing the water to flow along the surface till it joins the rivers, which are the great natural drains for the moisture on the surface of the earth. The usual, and most certain, method of ascertain- ing the mineral contents of any given spot, whatever be the superficial indications, or proximate circum- stances of it, is by Boring. This process determines at once and satisfactorily, and at comparatively little cost, the order of the different substances, from the surface to any given depth ; also the exact thickness of each stratum at the place of section, and conse- quently affords the best data not only as to the actual existence of coal, but with reference to how far it may be of a kind, or lie in seams sufficiently thick, or at such depth, as may justify the sinking of a shaft, the erection of enginery, and the general working of the bed or beds. The following sketch is a representa- tion of the apparatus for boring, as commonly con- structed. BORING APPARATUS. 177 Fig. 20. A spot being fixed upon, the first object of the workmen is to obtain a stout springing pole A, which is twelve or fourteen yards in length, and generally, where practicable, made of a tree fresh felled and bough-lopped for the purpose. It is securely fastened down at the thick end, a short distance from which it rests upon the prop or bearer B. Near the small end, a wooden stave is passed through, affording convenient hand-hold for two men, when standing on the stage c. Over this stage, and also exactly over the spot where the boring is to take place, a triangle D, is erected, consisting of three poles fastened at the apex, and sustaining a pully-block and rope the latter attached to the windlass E. The use of this tackle will presently appear. A flooring of planks, F G, is then laid down, having a hole in the centre through which the rods are to work. These rods H K, are of iron, four feet long, an inch in diameter, and tapped with good screws at their ends, which are made somewhat swelling out to give strength. The lowermost rod, or that which in boring actually operates upon the rock or other stratum, is a sort of chisel, K ; the uppermost terminates in a stout ring, through which passes the cross-piece L, and which, in working, is taken hold of by two men : it is also N 178 BORING AND SINKING. suspended to the springing-pole by a chain. One of the rods is formed at the end with a shell like a common auger, and is used for the purpose of bring- ing up at intervals portions of the detritus produced by the action of the chisel. The mode of operation is as follows : one, or more rods being pushed into the ground, tlirough the hole in the planks, the two men on the stage, taking hold of the cross-stave at the end of the springing-pole, work it steadily up and down; while the two men below, by means of the cross-piece, simultaneously heave and depress the suspended rods, walking at the same time slowly round the hole- by these combined operations of chopping and scooping, making way through what- ever substance may be in contact with the steel chisel of the lowest rod. When the boring becomes some- what obstructed by the accumulation of wreck, as the workmen call the mine stuff produced by the working of the chisel, or when they wish to ascertain what stratum they are passing through, the rods are drawn out by means of the tackle above described, the chisel is unscrewed off, and replaced by the shell, winch is then lowered to extract the loose matter for clearage and examination. M is the spanner used in screwing and unscrewing the rods; and N an iron fork, the prongs of which are placed across the rods below the swell, and in contact with the floor, to prevent the lower series from slipping down, while the upper one is being screwed off or on. The chisel soonest becomes clogged, and the tire- some operation of withdrawing the rods, is required to be repeated most frequently, when the stratum is somewhat soft and dry; on the other hand, the boring goes on most pleasantly for the workmen, when a PROCESS OF INVESTIGATION. 179 strong spring of water is tapped, as this generally overflowing, brings up with it to the orifice, every particle of the wreck as it is produced. The diameter of these borings is commonly from 2^ to 5 inches rarely so much as the latter. By tliis method, the stratification below any given plot of ground, is examined at a trifling expense, and with considerable precision. Williams, in his quaint style, has pourtrayed the pleasure attending these investigations when successful : " Of all branches of business," says he, " of all the experi- ments that a man of sensibility can be employed in, or attend to, there is perhaps none so amusing, so engaging, and delightful, as a successful trial upon the vestigia or appearances of a seam of coal or other mineral discoveries. When you are attending the people who are digging down or forward upon the vestige of the coal, and the indications are increasing and still growing better under your eye, the spirit of curiosity and attention is awakened, and all the powers of expectation are elevated in pleasing hopes of success ; and when your wishes are at length actually crowned with success, when you have dis- covered a good coal of sufficient thickness, and that all circumstances are favourable, the heart then triumphs in the accomplishment of its wishes with solid and satisfactory joy. There is more rational delight, more substantial pleasure and happiness, to be enjoyed in such scenes as this, than in all the celebrated amusements which luxury invents and pur- sues." He should have added that the mortifications attendant on disappointment are often proportionably trying. Having ascertained the existence, and workable N 2 180 BORING AND SINKING. condition of coal, by means of boring or otherwise, the next business is the sinking of the shaft. Tin's work, as well as the preceding, is not undertaken by the regular colliers, but by a separate class of men called sinkers. In the northern collieries the pits are invariably circular, and varying in their diameters from six to twelve feet. It is common to divide the very deep shafts by a brattice or boarded partition from top to bottom, the use of which will afterwards appeal- in these cases, the diameter is usually from 8 to 10 feet: sometimes the shaft is divided into three pails, and then it is generally from 10 to 12 feet across ; from 6 to 8 feet is a regular size where no brattice is intended. In Yorkshire, Staffordshire, and other places, where the distances between the surface to the coal are inconsiderable as compared with those about Newcastle, it is common to sink, of the smaller size, separate shafts for pumping, ven- tilating, and drawing the coals : occasionally, too, the pits for the latter purpose are oval in their form. The situation, form, and size of the pit being de- termined, operations are commenced by digging out the soil to a proper extent, and then erecting a windlass, called in some places stowses, or turn-stakes. This very ancient mining apparatus is generally known : it consists of two upright cheeks resting on cross pieces, and cut at the upper end of each, for the reception of the iron axes of a roller, having a stout winch handle, exactly similar to that seen over most draw-wells : upon this roller the rope is wound. At the end of the rope is the large iron hook made with a catch, to prevent it from slipping off the bow of the eorve or tub used in drawing up the materials. The tubs, which were formerly used, have now CRIBBING AND WALLING. 181 mostly given way to large wrought iron buckets placed upon soles shod with iron in the manner of a sledge, that they may be dragged along with the greater ease by means of a hooked rod and cross- piece, or handle. The ordinary tools of the sinker are, mattocks, gavelock, a sledge hammer twenty pounds weight, and several short stout wedges ; also a smaller hammer, long chisels, and an iron skewer for setting shots. After the sinking has proceeded some yards, more or less according to the nature of the strata excava- ted, it is necessary to commence operations for secu- ring the whole interior of the shaft except in very solid parts by means of a lining of brick. This cylindrical wall, or ginging, is raised upon a circular frame-work of wood called a crib, and which is itself made to rest, where practicable, upon a rocky or other solid ledge ; or, where the matter passed through is loose, those timbers which support the brick-work are themselves upheld by keys driven into the sides of the pit, or even suspended by chains from the top. The sinking is then resumed, and, in due course, another circuit of cribbing is laid, and a section of walling earned up, till it joins the lower pail of the preceding fabric. These operations and precautions are repeated at intervals, more or less frequently according to the nature of the strata ; the rocky por- tions do not always require such support. In order to secure that the shaft be regular in circumference, and accurate in perpendicular descent, a plumb-line is occasionally suspended from the top to the bottom, and the distance of the sides from the centre gene- rally about five feet measured by means of a stick kept for the purpose. All this is easily done when 182 BORING AND SINKING. the pit is circular, which is most common, or square, which rarely occurs ; but when oval, as is sometimes the case, the measurement, having to be made from three centres, is more difficult ; and accordingly the sinkers pride themselves, when they can work with perfect accuracy under the latter circumstances. When the substances passed through prove dry, the work proceeds without difficulty; but when water occurs, as is generally the case, and spouting, as it sometimes does, from several points of the circum- ference of the excavation, it is no easy matter to manage either the above-mentioned erection, or the sinking, satisfactorily. Means, however, are taken, generally by oblique gutters cut beliind the wall, or by the fixing of boards to conduct the streams to the floor, when it is either laded out into the bucket with the stuff dug up, or, if very abundant, sent out in an eighteen-gallon tub, lowered alternately with the bucket. In some instances, the interior of the shaft, when the water cannot be stopped or diverted suffi- ciently by the brick lining, is farther cased with boards nailed from one crib to another. These sur- rounding spouts in the Staffordshire pits are called garland circles : in some shafts there are not fewer than six or eight of these garland circles, by means of which the side water is collected and carried by an inclined drift or bore to the engine-pit. In the pits about Newcastle, and elsewhere, when great durability and firmness are aimed at, as well as an effectual means of keeping out the water, re- quired at whatever expense, this casing of the inte- rior with wood is very substantially effected. It is called tubbing. The earliest application of the sys- tem of lining shafts with wood, from which the appel- , TUBBING THE SHAFT. 183 lation of tubbing seems to have been derived, was the spiking of 2% or 3-inch planks (properly dressed to the sweep of the pit) to cribs or supports of 6 or 8 inches square, placed at intervals of 2 or 3 feet. With this description of tubbing was effected the win- ning of Hebburn, Jarrow, South Shields, and other collieries in the neighbourhood of Newcastle, about and since the year 1 790 ; in which collieries some of these tubs are sustaining water under a pressure of 40 fathoms, or 100 Ibs. per square inch. About the year 1 795, the late Mr. Barnes at the King Pit, Walker Colliery, on the Tyne, introduced cast-iron tubbing, consisting of entire circular rims the size of the shaft ; these were found exceedingly convenient in passing through sand and other loose matter, especially near the surface. The improve- ment, however, which has given to this kind of secu- rity its full convenience and efficiency, was the plan of casting the metal cylinder in segments adopted by Mr. Buddie, in the winning of Percy Main Colliery in 1796. In the cast iron work of this intelligent in- dividual, to whose scientific and professional exertions the mining district about Newcastle is indebted for so many of its greatest improvements, * the flanches were bolted together and projected inside towards the centre of the pit. This inconvenience was removed, and cast iron tubbing carried apparently to its limit of useful application, when a plan was adopted for putting the segments together without screw bolts at * It may not be uninteresting here to mention that Mr. Buddie has pre- sented to the Natural History Society of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the various plans, sections, and written documents accumulated by him through a long period of professional experience, as one of the most intelligent and respec- table coal viewers in that district : he has also suggested to the Society the propriety of making a collection of mining records, according to a plan which he laid down. 184 BORING AND SINKING. all, in the winning of Howden Pit in 1805, since which time this method has been universally adopted. Mr. Buddie mentions one instance in his experience, where, in sinking a shaft he had occasion to insert forty fathoms of iron tubbing ; at that depth the strata became impervious to water. In order to break up such rocky masses, as cannot be separated by the gavelock, recourse is had to blasting, a somewhat dangerous but highly effective agency. In " setting a shot," as the miners term it, the first operation is the making of a hole in the solid substance of the stone ; this is done by a succession of strokes upon the head of a long stout chisel held in the hand of the workmen, and turned about, as in the method of boring before described. The hole is of a triangular shape, about two inches in diameter, and thirty inches deep more or less, according to the thickness of the substance in which it is made. The direction of the bore, and position of the angles in relation to the matter to be detached, are of im- portance, and can be so adapted by experienced sinkers as to enable them to form in general, a very accurate estimate of the effect of the explosion. If the hole be too shallow, the shot will merely rive away a superficial portion of the rock; if, on the other hand, it be sunk nearly through the mass, it will burst downward, and spend itself among the interstices of the stratum. After the hole is bored, it is charged with gunpowder, to the depth of several inches : a long pricker" or skewer is then put down in one of the angles, and filled about with marl, or such stuff as may be at hand ; this is rammed with an iron rod, care being taken not to strike a spark from the adjacent materials from which occurrence BLASTING HORSE GIN. 185 dreadful accidents have sometimes happened. When thispart of the operation is finished, the pricker is withdrawn, and a wheaten straw filled with powder, and to the top of which a slip of touch-paper, or paper merely greased, is stuck with a hit of clay, is inserted: a light is then applied, and the miner is drawn up as quickly as possible. It is the practice, sometimes, instead of inserting the fuze, to cover the hole with gunpowder, scattering at the same time a considerable quantity over the pit bottom, upon which fire is thrown from above : this slovenly and wasteful plan was exclusively in use half a century ago. When the sinking has proceeded to such a depth that the labour of drawing up the matter by means of the windlass becomes exceedingly great, a machine called a gin is generally set up, the stones and rub- bish already brought up being used in the formation of what is called the gin-race, or Circular track in which the horse attached to the machine travels. The following is a representation of the gin, which Fig. 21. was the most perfect contrivance for drawing coals and water out of the mine previously to the intro- duction of the steam-engine : it is still extensively 186 BORING AND SINKING. used in many small concerns, where the produce does not justify the erection of a more expensive apparatus. A, the head-gear, consisting of two upright posts in which wheels are fixed, and over which those por- tions of the rope to which the buckets are attached pass into the pit. B, a drum, or short wooden cylin- der, about five or six yards in diameter, upon wlu'ch the rope winds : this drum has a vertical shaft, to a cross-piece of which at c, the horse is attached ; its lower end rests in a socket on the ground, and is supported above by the transverse beam D, raised on standards at each end. The rope being wound about the gin, the horse is driven in one direction until one bucket is lowered to the bottom and the other raised to the surface and then, by reversing his course, the latter bucket, having been emptied at the bank, is made to descend, and the other as filled below is drawn up. The expense attendant upon sinking a shaft will depend, of course, a good deal upon the depth and nature of the strata requiring to be penetrated. Mr. Buddie states that in Northumberland, he has, in several cases, known a single pit, previously to its being worked, cost upwards of 70,000. This sum included the machinery requisite for sinking the pit, namely, the steam-engine and all its apparatus ; but as this was merely to get at the coal, it may be con- sidered as a winning charge, rather than a working charge. The deepest pit with which the gentleman above named was acquainted, as a working pit, was 180 fathoms of shaft ; the shallowest 23 fathoms ; but the pitmen sometimes descend much deeper by means of inclined planes under ground. MONKWEARMOUTH COLLIERY. 187 TJlie shaft at present sinking at Monkwearmouth Colliery, near Sunderland, has attained a consider- ably greater depth than any mine in Great Britain, (or estimating its depth from the level of the sea, than any mine in the world.) It was commenced in May, 1826. The upper part of the pit is sunk through the lower magnesian limestone strata, which overlap the south-eastern district of the Great New- castle Coal-field, and which, including a stratum of " freestone sand" at the bottom of the limestone, ex- tended at Monkwearmouth, to the thickness of 330 feet, and discharged towards the bottom of the strata the prodigious quantity of 3000 gallons of water per minute, for the raising of which into an off-take drift, a double-acting steam-engine, working with a power of from 180 to 200 horses, was found neces- sary. The first unequivocal stratum of the coal for- mation, viz., a bed of coal 1| inches thick, was not reached till August, 1831, (being about 344 feet be- low the surface,) after which the tremendous influx of water which had so long impeded the sinking operations was " stopped back" by the metal tubbing which extended from the above bed of coal to within 26 yards of the surface. The sinking now proceeded with spirit still, no valuable bed of coal was reached, although the shaft had passed considerably above 600 feet into the coal measures, and much deeper than had hitherto been found requisite for reaching some of the known seams. It became evident that the miners were in unknown ground. A new " feeder" of water was encountered at the great depth of 1000 feet, re- quiring fresh pumps and a fresh outlay of money. The prospects of the owners became unpromising in the eyes of most men, and were denounced as hope- 188 BORING AND SINKING. less by many of the coal-viewers !* Coal-viewing, however, had as yet been limited to some 200 or 220 fathoms ; and the views of the Messrs. Pemberton (the enterprising owners of this colliery) were not to be bounded by such ordinary depths; they consi- dered that the thickness of the coal formation might be vastly greater where protected by the super-incum- bent limestone, than where exposed to those denuda- tions which, in the neighbourhood of the " rise" col- lieries, had probably swept away the strata through which their own shaft had hitherto been sunk ; that they were, therefore, justified in anticipating the larger and known seams at greater depths ; and that, in case these larger seams had (as was intimated) been split into smaller strata, the same causes which in other places had produced their subdivision might, at Monkwearmouth, have effected their junction. They continued, therefore, their sinking, and in Oc- tober, 1834, reached a seam of considerable value and thickness, at the depth of 1578 feet below the surface ; and presuming that this newly discovered seam was identified with the Bensham seam of the Tyne, (or Maudlin seam of the Wear,) they are ra- pidly deepening their shaft, in anticipation of reach- ing the Hutton or most valuable seam, at no distant period, but which (if their anticipations are well founded) will be found at a depth approaching 300 fathoms from the surface ! ! In the mean time, how- ever, workings have been commenced in the supposed Bensham seam, though not as yet carried to any great extent : and when only a few days before this sheet went to press (April 1835) the writer paid a visit to the pit, he found the sinking still going on, * Durham Advertiser. ADITS, OR WATER DRIFTS. 189 the depth reached being about 265 fathoms. The outlay of capital in this spirited undertaking has been immense it is said not less than between 80,000 and 100,000. As pertaining immediately to the province of the sinker may be mentioned the driving of thirls, or adits, for the emission of water at what are called day-levels. Tins was a primitive method of draining coal in situ- ations which rendered the adoption of such an expe- dient available ; and especially before the introduction of hydraulic machinery, or the steam engine. The particular mention of drifts to cany off the water, oc- curs, in connexion with the sinking of pits at Ferry- hill, in a lease to the Prior of Durham dated in 1354. The old Preston Grange Colliery near Edinburgh, abandoned in 1746 on account of being inundated, discharged 220 gallons per minute, by means of a drift, into the Frith of Forth. In South Wales the numerous deep valleys intersecting the coal country, afford many favourable opportunities for this kind of drainage : in general these adits are used as canals for bringing out the coals. Since the application of steam power in its most efficient forms, some gigantic undertakings for carrying off the water by day levels have been completed : the Cornish adit, for example, which drains about fifty mines, extending its ramifi- cations about 26,000 fathoms, or nearly thirty miles, is a prodigious work of this kind : it empties itself into the sea at Falmouth harbour. The adit of the Duke of Bridgewater's collieries at Worsley is about thirty miles long, and navigable for barges used in the ex- traction and transit of the coals. There are several others of great extent, and that have been the subject of enormous expense in different pails of the country, particularly in the lead mining districts. 190 BORING AND SINKING. Few operations can be conceived more unpleasant and dangerous to the workmen, than the execution of these adits, especially when, as is sometimes the case, they are barely wide enough to allow the sinker to creep along. The dangers which are created by blasting the solid rock with gunpowder in such con- fined spaces, will be easily conceived : in the stillness of night the report of these explosions is sometimes heard to a distance of three or four miles ; and the writer of this recollects on one occasion to have heard the wife of an intrepid sinker describe the feelings with which, at midnight, she used to hear when in bed, the reverberation of every shot fired by her husband in his dangerous subterranean toil, at a distance of two miles at least. CHAPTER X. WORKING MACHINERY. Drawing and air shafts Importance of Ventilation Draining the Mine Bearing of strata Early contrivances for raising the water Bucket wheels Steam-engine Boulton and Watt Pumping appa- ratus Subterranean Steam-engines Deep Pits divided by Bratticing Head GearWliimsey Steam-engine and counter-poise Hydraulic Machi- nery for raising Coals Corves, Trams, Buckets, and Waggons Screen Entrance to Pits by Ca- nals and Footrails. ASSUMING, in accordance with the preceding Chapter, that a shaft is sunk to the coal, and properly secured against the irruption of loose shattery sand or gravel, as well as of water, by wood or iron tubbing, it is proper farther to state, that this shaft must either be divided down the middle by a partition of boards, so as to form upcast and downcast tubes for ventilation, and, in some cases, to serve for engine-pumps, as well as drawing coals ; or else, that another pit must be sunk, to be connected with the former by means of an underground drift, and thus afford a circulation of air. In very deep pits, the saving of expense 192 WORKING MACHINERY. commonly compels the former course ; in other cases, the latter method is adopted. In Staffordshire, it is usual to sink " a pair of pits" ; the establishment of works for a single colliery being called " a plant," or plantation. That most important particular in the economy of our mines, and upon which the health and lives of the colliers so much depend namely, Ventilation has been the theme of a great deal of discussion not always temperately conducted. The philanthro- pist has sometimes upbraided the coal-viewer with murder, for neglecting the trial of some theory of injecting or circulating air ; while the viewer, in turn, has occasionally scouted, with perhaps too little ceremony, schemes which appeared ingenious and plausible enough on paper, but which might be to liim obviously unavailable in practice. It will at once be apparent, that the mere existence of two or more pits at any given distance from each other, would do little, if any thing, toward cooling the interior of the mine, and changing the respirable air : the pits would simply stand, full of air, as in two vessels, under similar circumstances, water would stand at one level. Air must, therefore, be either artificially forced down one of the vents, or it must be made to descend by altering the quality of the subincumbent portion : both these methods have been resorted to the latter with most success. As the natural ten- dency of the atmosphere to restore its equilibrium, causes the general volume to travel by the nearest direct channel toward any place where a partial vacuum is formed ; and as the object of the miner is to counteract, or rather to take advantage of, this law, stoppages are so arranged in the workings, by DRAINING THE MINE. 193 trap-doors* or ether means, that the current brought down the working pit, instead of being allowed to rush to the air-pit directly, is first made to circulate as deviously and extensively as possible. We shall have occasion to advert to this arrangement again, and more particularly. The draught is created, or a sort of vacuum formed in the air-pit, sometimes sim- ply by the suspension of a pan of burning coals, but more perfectly by closing the pit overhead, with the exception of a chimney, and keeping up a fire therein, either near the top or at the bottom, as most conve- nient : thus by rarifying the air at this extremity, that portion of it which has been rendered foul by breath- ing rushes to the heat, while, to supply its place, a new and unvitiated volume is forced down the open pit. The next object of attention, and one equally im- portant with ventilation, is the Draining of the Works. In almost every colliery there is more or less water in most so much, that the pumping of it out of the workings is an affair of considerable importance; and sometimes it is necessary to erect the steam-engine, and work it for this purpose, during the sinking the pumps being suspended and lengthened as the shaft increases in depth. It must at once occur to the reader, that, as the strata of every coal field have a certain inclination with respect to the horizon, called the dip and me, as well as commonly a level line of bearing, forming right angles therewith (to say nothing of * The boys who attend to open and shut these doors, are called trappers : they have seats near the doors, and remain by them all the time the pit is at work. As these trap-doors are, as it were, the air- valves, by means of which the ventilation of the works, in connection with underground passages, is kept up, a proper attention to them is a matter of great importance. They are, however, on account of the simplicity of the duty to be performed, com- monly entrusted to young boys on their first entrance upon work. O 194 WORKING MACHINERY. the many other complex modifications occurring in practice) ; and,, as the drainage will generally follow the descent of the measures, it will be necessary to select such a situation for the engine-pit, that, as the excavations in getting the coal are extended, the water, instead of accumulating in the works, may run off to the place of the pumps. With this design it is usual to sink the engine-pit at the lower part of the field, the drawing shaft being at a short distance above on the rise of the strata. The annexed dia- gram will sufiiciently explain the arrangement. Fig 22. Suppose the cross lines c AV to indicate a tract con- g taining coal measures, ^* which rise to the west and dip towards the east, the cross bearing of the strata having a slight inclination from north to south. The course of winning would be having sunk the engine-pit at A, nearest the lowest angle of the ground, and the working-pit at B, a little higher up, and having opened a passage between them, the next operation would be, to cut a drift or water-course along the lowermost level of the tract from A to D, so that when what is called the winning headway, or main tho- roughfare, is excavated from A to c, and the engine and drawing apparatus got to work, the coal is said to be won. The water from the workings which are earned on the rise, mostly flowing off by means of cross galleries to the sump, or well in which the pumps work ; some portion also, it may be, running down the headway A c. Prior to Mr. Newcomen's application of steam BUCKET WHEELS. 105 to raising water from coal mines, both the water and coal were usually raised by means of engines wrought by horses, a method still in use among some land-sale collieries. About two centuries ago, a patent was granted by James VI. of Scotland, for the discovery of an engine for raising water from coal mines.* In 1630, a charter was also given to a person called David Ramsay for a similar invention. f Sometime after " Master Beaumont, a gentleman from the south, brought with him rare engines to draw water out of the pits," J at Newcastle. At the Lumley collieries, about 1676, " the engines were placed in the lowest places, that there may be the less way for the water to rise ; and if there be a running stream to work the engines it is happy. Chain pumps are the best engines, for they draw constant and even : but they, can have but two stories of them ; the second being with an axle- tree of seven or eight fathoms, and the deepest story is wrought by buckets, and a wheel and ropes with the force at the top." These contrivances were, on the whole, clumsy, dangerous, expensive, and in- efficient. Mr. Bald, in his view of the coal trade of Scotland, printed in 1812, informs us that about 1690, water wheels and chains of buckets were com- monly employed to drain collieries in that country. The axle of the wheel extended across the pit mouth, and small wheels were fixed upon the axle to receive endless chains of two or three tiers which reached down to the coal. To these chains were attached a number of oblong wooden buckets or troughs in a horizontal position, which circulated continually with the chains ascending on one side and descending on * Arn. Hist, of Edinb. 66. f Rymer Feed. 1. xix. f. 189. J Grey's Chorographia, 26. North's Life of Guildford, p. 137, o 2 196 WORKING MACHINERY. the other, filling at the bottom, coming up full, and discharging at the top, as they turned over the wheels on the great axletree, and then descending empty to be filled again. Such a contrivance was very im- perfect : not only was there required a considerable head of water to turn the large wheel ; but of that which was takeil up by the buckets no small portion of it was spilled before it reached the top : besides, the machine was very expensive, costing, for a pit of eighty yards, not less than 160 : there were like- wise constant repairs for, when a joint-pin gave way, the whole set of chains and buckets fell to the bottom with a most tremendous crash, and every bucket was splintered to pieces. Where water could not be procured to work these machines, the same sort of machinery, only on a smaller scale, was adopted to be moved by horses. These were comparatively very expensive, and could only draw water from a small depth ; so that those deeper fields of coal, where neither a day level nor water machinery could be employed, remained use- less and that to all appearance, for ever, as there was no other device for getting clear of the water. From the same authority we learn, that in the year 1708, wind mills were erected to work pumps in several collieries in Scotland ; but these, although efficient machines at times, were very irregular ; and in calm weather the mines were drowned and the workmen thrown idle. In the year 1 709, John Earl of Mar, who paid the most minute attention to the improvement of his col- lieries in Clackmannanshire, sent the manager of his works to Newcastle to inspect the machinery of that district, and learn the mode of conducting colliery STEAM ENGINE. 197 operations in every department. From Ins report it appears, that the machines then in use were water wheels and horse engines, with chain pumps; the common depth 6f the pits was from twenty to thirty fathoms, and a few from fifty to sixty fathoms ; the expense of sinking one of these was about 55 ; and the machine for drawing the coals cost only 28. It appears that when it was requisite to draw water from the depth of thirty fathoms, two pits were sunk at a little distance from each other ; one pit was made thirty fathoms deep, the other only half that depth. One machine drew the water half way up the deep pit, and then it was poured into a mine, which com- municated with the bottom of the other pit : from tin's the water was raised to the surface by another machine. In deeper mines, a third pit, with a third machine, was resorted to. But in Scotland, at the same time, the machinery was more powerful; as water was raised at once from the depth of forty fathoms, by the chain of buckets before described.* Though it is generally admitted that the Marquis of Worcester has referred to some kind of a steam- engine, in his " Century of Inventions," so early as 1655, there was no practical application of any such machinery, so far as is known, until more than half a century afterwards. One of the earliest recorded experiments having been made at the colliery of GrifF, near Coventry, where the proprietors are said to have maintained a great number of horses, at a vast expense. Mr. Hodgson states, that the first seen in the county of Northumberland^ was erected at Byker, * Bald, as quoted in Farcy's Treatise on the Steam Engine, p. 227. f To an individual in that county is attributed a contrivance, the origin of which has often been alluded to in various ways in 1718, Mr. Beighton, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, removed the flimsy strings and catches with which 198 WORKING MACHINERY. in 171-1, by the son of a Swedish Nobleman, who taught mathematics in Newcastle. "This powerful engine is now in common use in all the large col- lieries. As shnplifiers of it, the names of Messrs. Boulton and Watt, as well as that of the ingenious builder of the Eddystone light-house, will be long remembered." When the last-named party, under the sanction of their patent, introduced the improved steam engines into the mining districts, they stipu- lated, after receiving a large price for the engines put down, to divide with the parties working them, the amounts accruing from the saving of fuel effected, as compared with the old machines ; and so profitable was this arrangement, especially in Cornwall, where coal was dear, that one concern (the Consolidated Mines Company), using three powerful engines, paid to the patentees 2,400 per annum. The pumps, of which there may be one or more in each pit according to circumstances, are of a size proportionate to the work to be done : sometimes they are 12, 18, and even as much as 24 inches in diame- ter. If there be two or three pumps or cylinders, as is' sometimes the case, they are placed side by side, and supported at intervals by beams fixed across the pit ; cisterns being placed at different elevations to which the water is raised, and if possible delivered off by an adit considerably below the surface : in some instances also, cisterns are placed at the level of feeders of water that occur at a distance of many fathoms from the bottom, and deliver some hundreds of gallons per minute, so as to save the waste of steam power which would be consequent on allowing this the self-acting eugine had, till that time, been incumbered, and applied lever-rods for opening and shutting the cocks, which seemed to perfect the machine. UNDERGROUND STEAM-ENGINES. 199 water to fall to the sump, in order to raise it through the whole kngth of the pumps. The hydraulic ac- tion is exactly similar to that of a common sucking pump. The bucket in each cylinder consists of a stout rim of iron, surrounded with thick leather, and having a" cross bar, to which are hinged two valves or clacks opening upwards : there is also a similar contrivance made stationary near the bottom of the pump. The rods or spears to which the working buckets are attached, are fastened with cottars on each side of a piece of wood, which is suspended fey chains on the head of the engine beam, wliich projects through an opening in the engine-house, and over the pit : it has a lug or bracket on each side, and which fall upon pieces of timber, and thus pre- vent the rods from sinking too low. T?o the upper part of its face the rods, as already stated, are sus- pended by a stout chain, exactly resembling in con- struction that inside a watch : occasionally, the more scientific contrivance for affecting the parallel motion, by means of iron rods, is adopted. In order to avoid the inconvenience resulting from the immense weight of the pump rods in very deep mines, as well as to serve other purposes, there have been instances of the erection of steam-engines 100 fathoms below the surface. Mr. Farey mentions an instance of an en- gine working underground in a colliery at White- haven in 1776. It was placed 80 fathoms beneath the surface, and worked a series of pumps disposed down the dip or inclination of the strata of coal, which was very rapid. The pumps lifted four fathoms each, from one to another, and were worked by one sliding rod from the engine. The intention of this disposition was to avoid piercing the floor, which 200 WORKING MACHINERY. must have been done with a perpendicular pit, and thus have let much water upon the workings. The same authority adds : " In many situations where the bed of coal dips suddenly, and if the strata be- neath the coals be of a porous nature, it is of great importance to preserve the water-tight floor of the coal perfect, in order to prevent the passage of the water ; and in all such cases the pumps must be placed on the slope of the strata, instead of in perpendicular pits."* In the Alfred pit at Jarrow, there is a 30- horse steam-engine erected at a depth of about 130 fathoms below the surface : it is used in raising the coals up a shaft which unites with the workings, car- ried out 45 fathoms deeper still : there is likewise at the profound depth indicated by these two shafts, another steam-engine, to draw the coals up an in- clined plane that lies coincident with the dip of the strata. We may now proceed to describe the arrange- ments adopted for raising the coal. The erection of head-gear will depend much, not only upon the de- scription of machinery to be employed, but also upon the number and shape of the corves intended to be used. In some of the Staffordshire collieries, two pits are sometimes sunk sufficiently near each other to be worked by the same gin or whimsey, one of the buckets or corves ascending, while the other is de- scending in a separate shaft. In certain situations of this sort, the erection over the pit-mouth is ex- ceedingly simple and inexpensive, consisting some- times of nothing more than an inclined piece of tim- ber with a pulley at the end for the rope to pass over, and supported by wooden props, as represented in * Treatise on Steam-Engine, p. 238, HEAD GEAR. 201 Fig. 23. the accompanying sketch (fig. 23). A is the profile of the parallel beams which support the head wheel. B the banksman, whose business it is to lay hold upon the corve on its ascending above the pit-mouth, by means of his hook ; and having released it from the chain, to hurry it away, c the corfe, made of ribs of iron, and filled with hard coal. E E the rope which passes between the se- cond pit and the whimsey (see fig. 24)/ The more common structure, however, is si- milar in general arrange- ment to the delineation on next page (fig. 24). Two cast-iron wheels, 4 feet diameter, either with grooved edges for round ropes, or with cylindrical surfaces for flat ropes, are elevated beside one another in the upper part of a framework of timber over the mouth of the pit : the whole is rendered very substantial by buttresses applied on every side. In some collieries chains are used ; they are reckoned more economical than ropes, but the links are more liable to snap without giving warning by appearances of wearing or otherwise, than is generally the case with ropes. A flat rope, con- WORKING MACHINERY. sisting of four round ones sewed together, and in- vented by the late John Curr, Esq. of Belle Vue, Fig. 24. near Sheffield, is in general use. The ropes or chains pass from the head wheels to the drum of the gin, or to a wooden cylinder, on the axle of a wheel worked by an adjacent steam-engine, upon which they are wound. The annexed cut represents the exterior appearance of one of the old-fashioned steam-engines, still very common about collieries, and called a whim, Fig. 25. COUNTER-WEIGHT. 203 or whimsey (fig. 25). A the engine-beam. B the boiler, c the working cylinder. D the fly-wheel. F the cog-wheel, carrying the drum upon which the rope is wound. E E the ropes, passing to the head- gear (see fig. 23). In the working of this machi- nery, the engine-tenter stands with his hand upon a lever, to stop the steam, and stay the action of the whole, the moment he sees the corfe aboveground. In some collieries, the engines of Boulton and Watt, or others of an expensive description, are erected, as well for drawing out the coals, as for pumping up the water. In drawing the loaded corves up the deep shafts on the Tyne and Wear, it is commonly found necessary to aid the power of the steam-engine in the earlier stage of its operation, by means of an ingenious contrivance calle4 a counter- weight. The plan is this : a few yards from the drawing machinery, a pit is sunk for the reception of a ponderous chain, which, passing over a pulley ele- vated on posts, is attached to the shaft of the drum upon which the main rope winds. When the power of the engine begins to be exerted in raising the corves from the bottom of the pit, this chain, many of the terminal links of which weigh 100 Ibs., likewise ex- erts a degree of aid proportionate to its weight. As, however, the engine acquires energy by the elevation of the loaded, and the descent of the empty corves, the ponderous links of the chain fall upon each other at the bottom of the counterpoise pit, until the engine, having raised its load to a position which leaves sur- plus power, the chain, being reversed on its drum, begins to be wound up ; thus countervailing the ve- locity of the machinery at its maximum, as it had previously aided it at its stage of least efficiency. 204 WORKING MACHINERY. The annexed slight profile sketch of the works at Carville on the Tyne, in the Wallsend group of col- lieries, will give some idea of the arrangements above Fig. 26. described (fig. 26). A the tall brick funnel adjacent to the upcast shaft, u the smoke disperser. c a platform for convenience of cleansing, repairs, &c. D head-gear (Jig. 24.) over the drawing pit, sup- porting the wheels over which the ropes pass. E engine-house, containing the fly-wheel, winding cy- linders, and other machinery. F counterpoise. It should be mentioned that previously to the ap- plication of steam, by what was at first termed the " fire engine," a great variety of expedients for drawing coals were devised. " The most ancient machine in my knowledge, now [1797] in use," says Mr. CUIT, " is that invented by Menzey ; but there are few situations that afford the requisites necessary to that invention. A stream of water, with a fall of about half the depth of the pit is necessary, if any business of consequence must be done. Its con- struction consists of two rope wheels fixed upon one horizontal axis, which are so proportioned to the WATER ENGINES. 205 depths of the water pit and coal pit, as to reach the separate depths of the pits, by the same revolutions ; and the power applied is a tub of water large enough to overbalance the weight to be drawn. The second is the common machine, greatly in use in the neigh- bourhood of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the construction of which is, a water wheel and a rope wheel upon one horizontal axis; and the power is a stream of water, sufficient to overbalance the weight to be drawn. The method of obtaining this stream of water in the neighbourhood of Newcastle and Sunderland, where there are, I presume, no less than 30 or 40 in number, is a fire-engine placed by the side of the machine, which raises the water alternately to the top of the wheel ; but in two collieries where I have adopted them, the scheme is more advantageous than those at Newcastle, being able to do without a fire- engine erected solely for that purpose ; in the winter season when water is plentiful, and the engines are generally sufficiently employed with draining the collieries, we have the aid of adjoining brooks, which do our business ; and in the summer season, our engines are so constructed, as to apply a part of their power to raise the water to the top of the wheel."* So rapid have been the steps by which the steam engine has been advanced from the primitive model, to its present degree of perfection, that one finds some difficulty in conceiving of its employment, no longer than from thirty to forty years since, being merely that of pumping water upon a wheel in the absence of natural brooks ! We noticed, not long since, a contrivance for raising coals on a principle similar to the foregoing, * Coal Viewer and Engine Builder's Practical Companion, p. 34. 20(3 WORKING MACHINERY. at a coal-work in Derbyshire. The vicinity of a pit newly sunk for working, happening to include an old shaft heavily watered from near the top, an axle with drums was placed across : to one of these was sus- pended hy a rope, a large tub, and from the other a rope was earned over the head wheels at the adjacent pit the tub being at the top of one pit whilst the corfe was at the bottom of the other, and vice versa. The tub thus suspended near the spring, was made to stand constantly full of water on the ringing of a bell from the pit, the common intimation that the corfe must be drawn up, a catch is let go by the banksman, who pressing upon a brake to regulate the velocity of the machinery, suffers the tub to descend to the bottom, when a valve is opened and the water flows out, the corfe at the same moment being ready for landing at the other pit's mouth. An empty corfe being hung on, is just so much heavier than the empty tub, that the former descends while the latter is brought up and secured in the situation first described. Tin's plan, which however can rarely be adopted, is free from many of those chances of accident to which other methods of drawing are liable, where the machinery, if not stopped exactly at the moment the corfe rises above the surface, and the reverse motion to lower it for removal accurately performed, will cany it over the head-wheels, and produce, as sometimes happens, fatal consequences. In Brinsley colliery, Notts., large buckets of water descending upon wheels along an inclined plane were at one time used to draw coals. To facilitate the landing of the corfe or waggon, a strong wooden platform or trap-door is constructed, so as to admit of being brought over the pit mouth, LANDING PLATFORM. 207 and locking with an iron bar, by the mere lifting of a lever, the instant that the ascending corfe lias cleared its level, immediately after which, by a reverse motion of the machinery, the corfe is dropped upon the platform, detached from the hook, and drawn away to bank, or to the tram road. About New- castle, two, and in some cases three, of the basket corves are drawn to bank at a time: they are sus- pended at short distances from each other on the rope, so that they occupy no more room in their progress up and down the shaft, than would be occupied by single corves. In some pits attempts are making to substitute large iron tubs for these baskets in raising the coals ; at Braddyl's colliery of South Hetton, tubs, containing 24 cwt. each, are used. The term corfe*, is commonly applied to any shallow box, oi;like con- trivance, used for bringing stuff up out of mines : in the northern collieries, where the coals are tender and often broken, they use a basket-corfe of a globular shape, and formed of twigs : it has a stout bent iron bow, to which the rope is attached, and is generally moved about on a small, low, four wheeled vehicle called a tram. In Staffordshire, and some other places, the coals are drawn out of the pit in * The derivation is obviously from the Dutch Korf, a basket ; that used in our collieries being made of hazle rods, somewhat in the manner of a hamper ; the corf-bow was formerly for the most part of young seasoned saplings of oak, ash, or alder, of the thickness of three inches and about two yards long : it is now more commonly of iron. Great care is taken to keep up the corfe to its proper size ; for it is liable to be beaten down daily against the sides of the pit, and in time, to lose nearly one-third of its original measure. It is the banksman's office to take care that the corves be properly filled : if any fraud be discovered, they are set aside, and the hewer is not paid for them. The corver, or maker of them, is paid in the following singular way: he is allowed a certain sum (formerly 4d.) for every score of corves that are brought up the shaft, for which he is bound to find the pit with as many corves as are wanted, and also to keep them up to their exact measure, and in good repair. 208 WORKING MACHINERY. buckets attached to sledge bottoms, similar to those of the tubs used in sinking ; they are mostly made of sheet iron for the small, and of flat ribs rivetted at a distance from each other for the large coal. In the Yorkshire collieries, small waggons, made either of wood or of wrought iron, and generally in the shape of the large Newcastle waggons, are very generally used, as well in the underground operations, as in raising the coals from the pit, and also for drawing them to the carts, canal, or any adjacent station to which light cast-iron rails can be conveniently laid. A shaft, up which coals are to be drawn, especially when sunk to a great depth, and of considerable width, is commonly not oidy walled and bratticed with boards, as already described, but when intended for the working of square corves or waggons, it is furnished with what are called conductors, an admi- rable arrangement, which, along with the appropriate corfe, was invented by the late Mr. Curr, and gene- rally adopted in the extensive collieries about Leeds, Barnsley, and Sheffield. " These conductors," in the words of the patentee, " are nothing more than two or three upright rods of deal 4 inches by 3, bragged upon opposite sides of the pit, forming mor- tices or channels, by which the corves are conducted, being suspended upon cross-bars with rollers at their ends, which run within the mortices." In some places, these conductors consist of iron rods, bolted to massive beams at the pit bottom, and connected above to the head-gear by strong screws, which keep them tight and in their vertical position. In the use of single buckets, or even when drawing with the large bulging wicker-work corves, there is no occasion for guides of this sort, as, however the corves them- SCREENING APPARATUS. 209 selves may happen to turn about, their relation to the sides of the shaft and to each other remains unaltered. On the other hand, waggons in transitu, would, on account of their form, and the smallness of the space through which they pass, be liable to frequent and dangerous collision ; but when placed in a sort of iron frame or chair, on the outside of which are friction wheels in contact with the wooden conductors, or sliding rings upon the iron ones, a steady uniform motion is given to the waggon and its crib, even when moving at the rate of one hundred and forty yards in half a minute: on the whole load being drawn up, and lowered upon the platform as above mentioned, the wheels of the vehicle first coming in contact with the board, it stands loose, and ready to be drawn away, and to be replaced by an *empty one, an operation performed with surprising celerity. Connected with every pit in the neighbourhood of Newcastle there is a contrivance for screening the coals : in most cases it consists of a platform sloping at an angle of about 45 deg. from the raised bank about the pit toward the ground : at intervals are inserted grates twelve or fifteen feet in length, and about four feet wide, having the spaces between the bars more or less considerable according to the size of coal required to pass through. On each side of these grates, boards are placed to confine the coals in their course, and they are likewise boarded under- neath, in such a manner as form the surface of spouts, by means of wluch the dust and small coal which pass through the bars fall into waggons placed for that purpose, as other waggons are placed outside of them for the reception of the screened coal. In general, however, since the repeal of the duty has p 210 WORKING MACHINERY. left it at the option of the coal dealer whether he will send large or small coal to market, or both together, the screens are mostly used merely to take the dust out of the coal. In some situations, access to the coal workings is obtained, and the produce drawn out, by means either of a subterranean side cut from some navigable canal, or by a long tunnel laid with tram rails, and inclined more or less according to the eleyation of the mea- sures, and the relative situation of the sides of the yalley or foot of the hill through which the perfora- tion has to be earned. This description of entrance is called a futteril footrail ? There is probably no instance of its occurrence at the deep mines about Newcastle, though there are many in Yorkshire and other parts of the kingdom. Such road affords a convenient way for visiting the subterranean workings to those timid persons who might hesitate to descend the shaft by means of a corfe. Where there exists the convenience of cutting to the coal a gallery which shall incline from the workings to the day, if the distance be not considerable and the line direct, the laying down of double courses of flanch rails, enables the colliers to send out the full waggons so as to bring back again those that have been emptied, by connecting each set with a chain passing over a horizontal wheel at the head of the rail road. If on the other hand, the road inclines towards the coal, horses must be employed to bring out the waggons. A small canal, must, of course, be altogether on the dead level : in this case, the coals are either filled into long narrow barges at the water's head, or the corves are placed on a floating platform. CHAPTER XI. UNDERGROUND WORKS AND VENTI- LATION. Methods of Candying out the Underground Excava- tions of a Colliery Broad and Long Work Roads, Benks, and Gates Plan of a Staffordshire Colliery Ventilation Theory of the Circulation of Atmospheric Air Downcast and Upcast Shafts Furnace Simple and Compound Ventilation Other contrivances Description of Felling Colliery, Durham Extensive and orderly arrangements Fire Damp and Choke Damp Scheme of Venti- lation proposed by Mr. Menzies Blowers or jets of Inflammable Gas How got rid of. HAVING described the method of sinking a shaft, and of putting down pumps, with the requisite working machinery by means of which the gaining, or as the parties concerned term it, winning, the coal is effected, it is proper in the next place to give some account of the underground operations. In getting the coal, the colliers do not, on coming at the seams, begin to hack and hew down at random as large a quantity as possible of the stratum within their reach ; 212 UNDERGROUND WORKS AND VENTILATION. such a mode, although adopted to some extent in ob- taining the Bovey coal, which lies comparatively near the surface, and commonly also in getting iron ore, would be utterly inadequate and ruinous if applied to the working of the deep seams of coal generally. As the great object is to combine economy in ex- tracting the greatest quantity of coal, with seeming the personal safety of tl*e pitmen the latter, alas ! not always possible plans are laid down for under- ground operations, with as much accuracy as the inchnography of a complicated building or a city about to be erected on terra finna ; and these plans are practically carried out in the workings to an extent* and with a degree of precision, the result of that perfect adaptation of the means to the end, which long practice and incessant attention have introduced into our collieries. There are two methods of car- rying out the excavations in getting the coal the long or broad, and the short or narrow methods ; the former, by means of which nearly all the coal in- tended to be got is dug out at once, as is commonly the case in Yorkshire and elsewhere, where the strata immediately above and below the coal are hard and firm ; the latter method is general on the banks of the Tyne and Wear, in which districts the coal itself is not only much more tender, but the over and un- derlying matters less to be trusted to, so that large portions of the seam are required to be left to support the roof. The following underground plan, (in which of course there is no regard paid to exact proportion,) * The space traversed by some of the works in Northumberland, Durham, and Cumberland, is amazingly great. The Howgill Colliery at Whitehaven, the property of the Earl of Lonsdale, extended over an area of 2300 acres exceeding, in this respect, any other in the kingdom. PLAN OF A COAL WORK. 213 will illustrate one of the most ordinary modes of working in the Yorkshire collieries ^ EAST. 1 fe 1 J Il lo h 2 Coal. = 1 is I's i s cleared of ,and Roof jn down. * . S ?I c p Ce , "5 being o = p i > == Worked. = s;= t> g 3 -a 5 sss