384

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN,

February 21, 1913.

coal to Wombourne fault, and he believed that workable
coal would be found over the Wombourne fault and
between the second silurian crest. Along that crest
which the Claverley boring touched there would be a
narrow slang of barren ground, but between that crest
and the Highley and Kinlet and Billingsley coalfield
another set of coals would be found. In conjunction
with Mr. Russ, the manager of Billingsley Colliery, he
had carefully traced what they called the Severn Valley
fault, which was a downthrow of 300 yards to the east
from those coalfields. The coal had been worked up to
the Stanley and Severn Valley fault for about a mile,
and he found that that coalfield lay in a basin on the
old red sandstone, which basin was cut through by the
Severn Valley fault, and had, he believed, an old red
sandstone floor. Between Kinlet and Claverley that
floor must die out, as at Claverley the coal measures
rested directly on the Silurians. He would like to point
out that that silurian floor at that point must have been
subject to denudation, for he thought there ought to
have been at least 100 ft. or more of the soft silurian
shales, such as was found in the Black Country between
the coal measures and either the little or the great
limestone. If his deductions were correct, the coal
measures were laid probably horizontal and abutting
on either sides of the Shropshire crest, running as
mentioned; that would leave a coalfield having its
centre through Trysull, Billbrook and Penkridge, and
another coalfield on the western side of the same crest.
He would also like to point out the small unproductive
coalfield known as the Halesowen sandstone group.
That little upper coalfield was well known at Halesowen
and continued to the Sandwell Park Colliery, but as
they proceeded northward it was not found either at
Hamstead or at Perry sinking, but was found at
Claverley, and Mr. Russ and himself were of opinion
that it existed in the Kinlet, Highley and Billingsley
coalfield; but as they proceeded again north it did not
appear either at Smestow or the Four Ashes boring.
That was a point that wanted carefully watching and
keeping in mind.

With regard to the free band of Spirorbis limestone,
they were found at Claverley, Smestow and Four Ashes,
which, in his opinion, showed a continuity of the red
measures containing them. They hoped very shortly to
have one or two more boreholes put down in the north
of Claverley and Smestow which would settle a good
many of the points under discussion; and no doubt
when this was done, and the bond of secrecy then in
force was removed, they would be able to give the results
to the mining world. He could not close without
acknowledging the valuable help he had received from
Dr. Lapworth, Mr. Wickham King, Mr. Russ, and, last
but not least, Dr. Gibson, the writer of the paper, and
Dr. Arber, of Cambridge.

Mr. J. 0. Fobrest (Wolverhampton) said it fell to his
lot to have partly to prove the so-called “ western faults,”
and one of the grievances that he as a mining engineer had,
and would take that opportunity of explaining, was that
the Government were very busy with their geologists in
mapping dead coalfields, leaving the colliery owners to
prove the live ones. They wanted a properly prepared
geological map of one of the most important and
interesting districts in England. When the right man
came along, they would be glad to hand over any
information they had, but it was of no use revealing
anything unless and until they were quite sure of their
ground. When they had proved across the western
fault, they landed in a marl hole 400 yards underground,
and he would like geologists to tell them where they
were, because a marl hole at a depth of 400 yards was
rather a curious place to land in. They were proposing
to give their information in the form of a paper which
would be laid before the geologists, illustrated by a map
showing the sections that had been proved. Dr. Gibson
was very strong upon the conformity of the red measures
above the coal measures.' He (Mr. Forrest) must confess
his general agreement with him, and it was quite possible
that what he proved in his own experience was one of
the exceptions to Dr. Gibson’s rule; but at all events
they had proved something before they entered the
marls proper to the extent of 250 to 300 yards. Before
entering the marls they went through a series of those
red measures, and they proved the measures in the upper
reds, where they dipped away from the coal measures;
but still their experience might be an exception. He
could not too much thank the geologists who, by means
of the fossils, located the coal within 100 yards. The
rest of the questions raised were most interesting.
Personally, he did not like the Halesowen measures, and
he had had some experience there because things went
wrong. He had proved, and he was satisfied, that there
was a cross fault which was the same as the Bentley
cross fault, and which divided the South Staffordshire
part of the country from the north. The indications

kind which did not interfere with the amenities and
privileges of neighbouring mining properties, to send
them to the Geological Survey, so that they might be
consulted by geologists and others. He was delighted
to listen to Dr. Gibson, who 31 years ago was his (Dr.
Lapworth’s) first geological pupil in Mason College
(now Birmingham University). His career since he left
the college had been a very brilliant one, and he was now
in charge as director-surveyor of the whole of the coal-
field in the Midland neighbourhood. They expected
great results from his work in the Midland district,
which was a complicated region. The facts brought
forward in the paper, with their interpretation, were
undoubtedly exceedingly interesting. He was very glad
to learn the very important fact, novel to most of them,
of the great denudation in the north part of the coal-
field. They had been told also that the triassic bed
went well down upon the Etruria marl, so that
it might be that the upper and thicker series of the
red coal measures were missing. If that were true—
and they might always depend upon Dr. Gibson—there
was a very great hope that between the South Stafford-
shire coalfield in the Cannock Chase region and the
Coal brookdale coalfields there was a prospect of reaching
productive and profitable coal at no great distance from
the surface. The author was very careful to warn them
that if those conditions which obtained at Claverley
extended up the central portion of that district, they
might have to go down to a great depth before the coal
measures were reached. Dr. Gibson had given them a
number of facts very interesting from the geological
point of view, and one of those was the possibility that
there might be unconformity below those non-productive
beds of the coal measures, as believed by Jukes in the
olden days. Even he (Dr. Lap worth), following the
workers in Coalbrookdale, Mr. Clark, and others, felt con-
vinced that there were strong movements inside the coal
measures, and that there had been denudation within
the limits of those measures. Therefore, they ought
to be very cautious before they drew very large
inferences from small data. They must remember that
there were other believers in that unconformity. Even
in the latest number of the Journal of the Geological
Society of London they would see two papers, one of
them by a student of the Birmingham University, Mr.
W. H. Hardaker, who had by means of fossils proved
that some of the beds, even in the upper part of the
section above the Keele, were real permian fossils.
Therefore, it was only the lower portion of those red
beds—namely, the true Keeles—that went near the coal
measures. Mr. Vernon had written a second paper,
with a map of East Warwickshire, in which he had
shown several unconformities in those beds, and they
would therefore wait for their conclusion until Dr.
Gibson had been over that country, and they might
congratulate themselves that he would be responsible
for the mapping of the whole of that South Staffordshire
district in which they were all so keenly interested.

Mr. F. G. Meachem said he had listened with very
great pleasure to Dr. Gibson’s valuable paper. He was
glad to see that Dr. Gibson agreed with Mr. Hardaker
that they had permian rocks at Hamstead, which
appeared to correspond with the middle permians of
Enville. He had found the same fossils and reptilian
footprints at Alveley, not far from the River Severn.
During the last two years he had been actively engaged
in the Wyre Forest district, at Kinlet, Highley, and, in
conjunction with his friend Mr. Russ, around Billingsley,
Quatford, and the surrounding district, and the difficul-
ties he met with in getting at a clear idea of the country
led him for a time to abandon surface work and study
the floor, and in doing so he came to the conclusion, so
far as their present knowledge went, that there was a
basin between the western boundary fault and the
Kinlet, Highley and Shropshire coalfield having a
Silurian floor. There were two great Silurian ridges
which he believed were in existence before the coals
were laid down—the one commenced at the Hayes, near
to the east of Stourbridge, and passed through Black-
heath, where it was met with at the Yew Tree pit. It
was next met with at the Blakeley Hall Colliery, the
Bullocks Farm Colliery, West Bromwich, and passed
through the Sandwell Park Colliery, and came to the
surface at Newton-road, under the foot of the bridge of
the Tame Valley Canal at Newton-road. The finding of
the Silurians at Claverley led to a careful search, with
the result, he believed, that the valley already spoken of
between Staffordshire and Shropshire, was divided by
another carboniferous silurian bank which took its rise
near Shelsley, in Worcestershire, and was discovered by
Mr. Cantrill at Trimpley, near to Kidderminster, and
again in the borehole at Claverley, and he believed it
would be found to pass to the west of Stafford and on
to the silurian in North Stafford, to the east of Hanley.
Between the crests of these two waves lay the thick

were just enough to show that there was a cross fault
dividing the measures of the south from those in the
north. It divided the North Staffordshire coal from
the gasmaking coal. He did not know, but he was quite
satisfied from what he had seen as to there being a
coalfield of considerable magnitude and fairly reasonable
depth at the western side of the Cannock Chase
coalfield.

Mr. Wickham King (Hagley, Stourbridge) observed
that in a paper read by himself before the Geological
Society in 1899, it was stated that they found the
breccia bands on the top of the conglomerates in the
Enville district, and the conglomerates were tied much
in the same way and replaced by calcareous sandstone
One could not help being impressed, in going over the
Halesowen sandstone district, as to the amount of
irregularity in the measures due to some cause. He
knew one place at the end of that coalfield where from
the black coal up to the top of the Halesowen sandstone
was a distance of 900 ft., but only three miles away
there was another place where it was only 600 ft. He
could not help thinking that there was irregularity in
the deposits there. The other point that Dr. Gibson
brought out was that certainly a good deal of that
movement took place before the hunter was laid down.
He had been studying the question of that movement
very considerably for the last 20 years, and he quite
agreed, that there was a relatively small movement in
the hunter period, while a portion of the movements in
South Staffordshire were over before the hunter was
deposited. But there was some movement evident, and
he thought Dr. Gibson would find it necessary to
attribute more movement in the bunter period when he
got towards the south than be found in the north. Mr.
Meachem had raised a number of interesting questions
with regard to the floor of the coalfield. One point
which he thought was coming out was that there was a
ridge along from north to south—or, more strictly, from
south-south-east to north-north-west—in that district
before any of the productive coal measures of South
Staffordshire were laid down. He had dealt with that
quite recently, in the Geological Magazine last October
and November, and was not inclined to go further into
the subject at present. He was then dealing with some-
thing that existed before the anticlinal coal measures
were laid down. The coal measures gradually crept
over the top of those ridges and buried them up. He
thought the anticlinal movement was the longest, and
that seemed to be clearly proved; but they wanted a
great deal more light on the subject. One speaker had
complained of the geologists not helping the mining
engineer; the geologists, on the other hand, thought
the mining engineer did not render sufficient help to the
geologist. He was at present engaged on a subject in
which he wanted all the help he could get. He had
received a good deal of help, but he had had some
difficulty in getting help from some of them. Dr. Gibson
had a very difficult work in hand, because the structure
of the South Staffordshire coalfield was so frightfully
complicated. There were four lines of movement, if not
a fifth. He did not wish to say at present what the
fifth was, but he was fast coming to the conclusion that
there was a fifth.

Mr. Alexander Smith (Birmingham) said it was
quite clear they had entered upon the discussion of one
of the most important subjects in connection with the
coalfield of the Midland district, and it was so important
that he though they ought not to try and get rid of it
that day. In looking over Dr. Gibson’s paper one
thing struck him in a very emphatic way, and he hoped
that the doctor would seriously consider one remark he
had made. He had forgotten that he was addressing a
mining institute. He had told them that a wide area of
the workable coal lay hopelessly beyond their reach.
He thought that something might be left to their
embryo engineers, and it was too bad to limit their
budding powers to the capabilities of the present; they
would no doubt conquer the depth and prove the
workableness of the seams.

Mr. W. F. Clark (Walsall) seconded the resolution
in favour of adjournment. What struck him was the
remarks in regard to the denudation. All the geologists
had argued in support of the denuding action that had
taken place over that area. It seemed now that their
views had to be somewhat modified. They had heard
them speak of the floor of the coalfield, and now Mr.
Meachem had spoken of the great ridge. There was
another action which must have had a most important
bearing upon that area, and that was the denuding
action. If Dr. Gibson could give them any information
in definite shape in that direction, it would be
exceedingly interesting and would set them all thinking
along the right line.

The President proposed a vote of thanks to Dr.
Gibson.