138 BORING IN SEARCH OF COAL IN ESSEX.
was below the Carboniferous strata. With respect to the
suggested boring at Great Wakering, an important point for
discussion arose in the fact that this site was altogether out of
range of the district in which the funds for exploration had been
raised. The greater portion of this money was subscribed in the
county of Suffolk, and of course the reason many people sub-
scribed was rather from the commercial idea that if coal were
discovered the neighbourhood would get the benefit of the
discovery, than for the purpose of purely scientific research.
Under these circumstances, the Directors felt that they were
not justified in spending money in the district selected without
the consent of the Shareholders. It was also pointed out to
Messrs. Whitaker and Holmes that it would be very desirable,
if possible, to make the third boring in the neighbourhood of
Bury St. Edmund's, because, at the meeting held in that town
when the money was raised, the question was asked whether
they could not afterwards make a sinking thereabouts, and the
answer was that they certainly would do so if the result of other
experiments led them in that direction and the geologists advised
them to make the attempt. The reply of the geologists was that
they had examined the cores taken from the deep well-boring on
Lord Cadogan's estate at Culford, near Bury St. Edmund's,
Suffolk, and had found that the rocks there reached were almost
identical with those which had since been found at Weeley and
Stutton. They also said, with reference to the rocks got out at
Harwich some time ago, that they had examined some specimens
which were recently unearthed from a private collection in
London, and had formed the opinion that they were not
Carboniferous after all, but very similar if not exactly identical
with those found at Stutton and Weeley.1 Having the results
of four borings—at Harwich, Culford, Stutton, and Weeley—it
might practically be said that they had swept that part of the
country and found no coal. It was a well-known fact, further-
more, that there was no coal to the west of London, in Hertford-
shire. On the other hand, they had the fact that coal was now
found in workable quantities, and very successfully worked, in
the neighbourhood of Dover. The upshot was they were advised
1 Mr. Mason is here referring to the somewhat doubtful fossil which Mr. Prestwich
thought to be contained in the dark slaty rock, from below the Gault, at Harwich, and which
led him to believe that this slaty rock was of the Lower Carboniferous age. Mr. W. W. Watts
has recently subjected this supposed fossil to microscopical examination, and has been thereby
led to pronounce it to be merely a peculiar fracture in the rock, and to refer the Harwich rock,
on lithological grounds, to some formation older than the Carboniferous—probably Upper
Silurian, and similar to that found at Stutton and Weeley. It will be remembered that Mr.
Holmes stated in his report in 1894 (E.N,, viii., p. 145) that the boring "at Harwich
ended in beds apparently older than the Coal Measures."