Worcester daily spy. [volume] (Worcester [Mass.]) 1850-1888, 1872-08-22


of immediate interest to every householder in
London and the SOUTH 1t is nothing less than
a search for coal under the rocks Of the south
eastern counties. 4 committee of the British
association has been appointed TO discover
what is the order in which the strata lie under
the Wcalden, which occupies a great part of
Kent and Sussex; and a boring is to be com
menccd in the latter county on occasion of the
meeting of the association at Brighton on
the week after next. This boring is intended
to 70 through the Wealden and the underlying
secondary rocks to the Pal9ozoic strata, which
are supposed to lie still farther down at 4 depth
of from 100 to 1900 hundred feet. 1t is expected
by many biologists that at that depth coal meas
ures will be found which will be practically a
continuation of the Belgian coal fields on the
east and the Somerset coal fields on the west
There is little doubt that at some time the coal
measures have been there, and the question is
whether, as the late Sir ROderick SIurchison be-
Geved, they have been swept away by the OK
tensive foundations which preceded the de-
post of the chalk. Up to the present time
no coal has ever been discovered southeast
of Il line which may be drawn from Bath to
Stamford and continued thence to Yarmouth
The whole area Thus marked off is occupied
by strata far newer than the coal meas
sures; and though thin beds of shale and lig-
mite have been found, and beds of sandstone
strongly resembling those which overie the
coal, all attempts TO discover coal have hitherto
been useless Some curious efforts have been
made. Nearly two hundred years ago the Rev.
Giles Thornbury bored for coal at Guildford In
grubbing up the roots of an old oak, he had
found some pieces Of Ignite, and the discovery
at once suggested the search for coal. Accord
ing TO Aubrey, the coal was actually fOund-a
kind Of rocky coal, he says, like that which
they call Kennel coal, which burns like a can
die. But when the bOrers got 10 the coal the
irons broke, and as fast as new irons were put
i'll they snapped off; and as Mr., W. Lilly, the
astrologer, thought the irons were broken by
su0terraneOuS spirits, the attempt was aban-
dOned. In the first years of this century
shaft was sunk to the depth of 1874 feet at BeX-
hill in Sussex, and two seams Of Ignite were
met with; but the mine was drowned ont aud
the scheme was abandoned. About thirty
years ago an attempt was made to get up a col
liery company to sink shaft $50 feet deep at
WOrplesdon, near Working, through the Bag
shot sands; but it of course failed. Mr.. Joseph
PreStwich, in an article in the current number
of the Popular Science Review, says that among
experienced coal miners an impression exists
that coal Is TO be found in the tower tertiary
strata, between the London clay and the chalk;
but that all these expectations founded as they
are on the presence of irregular seams of lg-
mite, are necessarily futile. Coal is never to be
found in these newer rocks. 1t is a relic of an
earlier condition of the planets surface the
buried ruins OF an older world.
The failure of previous efforts to find coal in
the southeast of England is, however, no reason
for believing that coal does not exist. 1t has
never yet been looked for in the right place.
The coal measures are the upper part of tie
Pal9Ozoic series of rocks, and those rocks I'M
derhe the tertiary and secondary series, when
those series are present as they arc in this part
of England. Speaking roughly, there are some
fourteen of these strata which come in regular
succession, and which are altogether between
1000 and 5000 feet in thickness. On the assump.
ton, therefore, that the coal measures which lie
m f1a naef of paI,r IL.
us in Somerset and South Wales, are continued
under us, it was estimated that they would lie
at some eight thousand feet below the surface
But it has now been discovered that a good
many of these intervening strata are absent
In well sunk at Kentshtown few years since
which it was hoped would pierce the watcr-bear-
ing formation of the lower green sand, it was
discovered that there was no green sand TO pen
citrate; indeed, all the lower secondary strata
were absent, and at eleven hundred and thirteen
feet deep, what wcs supposed to be the old red
sandstone, which underlieS the coal measures
was found. AT Harwich, a year or two later,
like discovery was made, though the rock found
at depth of one thousand and twenty-five feet
was mountain limestone. This is very nearly
the depth at which the same PaIeozOic rocks
are found on the other side of the channel,
and il at once suggests the very strong
probability that in some parts of the south
ern counties the coal measures themselves
may be found at a similar depth. The
Somerset coal seams are lost at a point
between Bath and Frome, at a depth
of 500 feet. Between that point and Lon
don no trial pits or wells have been sunk to any
thing like thousand feet, yet it is after going
to at least that depth that the chances of finding
coal begin. There is well near Reigate 900
feet deep, another at Chichester 945 feet deep,
and one at Southampton, which is still in the
chalk, at a depth of 1917 feet. 1t is intended
that the boring now to be set on foot shall be
continued to the depth Of about 1000 feet 1t
may or may not pierce a seam Of coal, but it
will, at least, show in what order the older
strata lie, and will give biologists facts which
will enable them to point out where coal may
be found, or to decide that it cannot be found
at all.
Happily, the chances are that coal will be
found. MIR. Prestwlch estimates the area of the
supposed coal field at $50 miles in length by a
breadth varying from two miles TO eight
Such a coal field would be no insignificant addi-
ton to our national resources. Even though it
should lie at a depth at which coal is at present
only occasionally worked, it would be cheaper
and more available to us in London than the
nearest coal now worked. 1t would be prema-
ture TO speculate on the social aud industrial re-
suits of the discovery of a vast coal field at our
doors. To make coal as cheap on the Thames
as it is upon the Tyne, as plentiful south of
London as it is north of the Trent, would prob
ably be to cause the rise of a belt of manufac-
turing cities round London. But the first thing
of course, is to ascertain whether the coal is
there.