9
BORING IN SEARCH OF COAL IN ESSEX.
Referring to the notes on the search for coal in East Anglia
in volumes viii. and ix. of the Essex Naturalist, it may be
well to give the full text of the Report of Messrs. Holmes and
Whitaker to the Directors of the Eastern Counties' Coal Boring
Association, recently prepared with a view to a further experi-
ment. It is understood that the choice of the site for the third
trial-boring is now being considered by the Directors :—
REPORT BY T. V. HOLMES, F.G.S., AND W. WHITAKER, B.A., F.R.S., F.G.S.
" The question whether one or more coal-fields underlie the surface rocks
of the Eastern Counties is not yet solved, though the results already attained
possess considerable value. As the Eastern Counties' Coal-Boring and
Development Association is specially interested in the subterranean geology
of Eastern Essex and Suffolk, it was obviously test on all grounds to begin
the series of borings, by one within a few miles of that already existing at
Harwich. The rocks at the bottom of the Harwich bore-hole being usually
supposed to be Lower Carboniferous (though the evidence is inconclusive), it
was obviously desirable to ascertain whether the Upper Carboniferous, or
Coal-Measure, beds came on above them in that neighbourhood. However,
both at Stutton and at Weeley rocks of similar character to those of Harwich
have been found, and this fact, combined with the discovery that the dip at
Stutton is southerly, and with the general resemblance of the rock at the
spots just mentioned to that at Culford, near Bury St. Edmund's, makes it
advisable that the next trial should be still further to the south.
'' The selection of the site at Weeley was influenced by a desire to avoid
the area between Colchester and Mersea, in which the damage done by the
Essex earthquake was peculiarly great, as a district in which older rather
than newer rocks than those at Stutton were to be expected. And the very
high dip at Stutton made it possible that higher beds might come on a very
short distance south of that place, and that it would be a pity to leave the
area between the Stour and the Blackwater, and east of the Colne, untested,
However, the similarity of the rock at all the above-mentioned places makes
it seem best to suggest a site not merely south of the Blackwater, but even of
the Crouch. Perhaps the neighbourhood of Rochford, Southend, and Shoe-
bury would be as good a spot as could be mentioned. And this south-eastern
corner of Essex has the advantage of being as distant as possible both from
the unproductive Palaeozoic rocks north of the Blackwater and of those in the
district nearer London, along, and west of, a line between Crossness and
Ware. The. depth of the Palaeozoic rocks in the tract mentioned would
almost certainly be greater by 150 to 200 feet than at Weeley, owing to the
greater thickness of the Tertiary rocks in South Essex, and also of the Gault,
On the other hand, the Chalk is likely to be decidedly thinner.
" The Culford Palaeozoic rock is apparently older than Carboniferous,
probably Silurian, and lately it has been thought that the similar rock at