COAL UNDER SOUTH-EASTERN ENGLAND. 149
also warn us off certain tracts, at all events until our knowledge has greatly
increased.
I would also allude to the fact that in Northern France disturbances of a
peculiar character sometimes occur, by means of which older formations have been
pushed up above newer ones ; so that Coal Measures have been found and worked
beneath Devonian rocks. A like thing occurs also in the Bristol district, though
to a less extent. From this it follows that we need not utterly despair of finding
Coal Measures even where an older formation has been struck. At the same time
I do not advise the carrying on of trial-work in such cases, which should probably
be left until actual work gives indications of possible success. In conclusion I
would draw attention to the fact that about a third of the coal-yield of France is
got from hidden Coal Measures (covered by Cretaceous, etc., beds) along the line
indicated above. From this it seems fair to infer that there will be a successful
result from like enterprise in England. As I ventured to say, before the success-
ful issue of the Dover boring, "it seems to me that the day will come when coal will
be worked in the South-East of England.''
Dr. Taylor's short report was of a general nature, agreeing with
the above, but he did not recommend any particular locality in the
Eastern Counties as a place of trial for coal.
Since the reports were written, Messrs. Holmes and Whitaker,
having been asked by the Coal Boring Syndicate as to the best
locality for a first trial, decided, without any concert with each other,
that some place between Colchester and Harwich, not far from the
Stour river, would be the best.
Mr. W. Jerome Harrison, F.G.S., has written a pamphlet0 on the
subject, in which he gives his reasons for preferring the north-west of
Essex (in the neighbourhood of Newport, Quendon, and Thaxted)
as offering the most eligible site for a bore-hole likely to reach
Coal Measures, because he thinks they would there be met
with at less depth than in the other localities mentioned. Mr.
Harrison's pamphlet consists of revised reports, with additions, pre-
pared by him at the request of Col. Cranmer-Byng in 1S87 and
1891, and contains a large amount of information on the subject.
But with regard to his selection of a site, M. T. V. Holmes has
kindly sent us the following remarks :
" I cannot make out on what grounds Mr. Harrison expects to find Coal
Measures in the north-west of Essex. Of course they may be there. But as we
have Lower Carboniferous Rocks at Harwich, and know only of Paleozoic rocks
of quite another kind at Ware and Culford to the west and north-west, it seems to
me that the first step in a systematic series of borings should be to try a few miles
away from the only spot in the Eastern Counties where lower rocks of the same
series as the Coal Measures have been found. It is quite possible that the Palaeozoic
rocks under Bradfield may be older than those of Harwich, and that the coal-
6 "On the Search for Coal in the South-East of England, with special reference to the
Probability of the Existence of a Coal Field beneath Essex."—Birmingham, 1894.