THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN

AND

JOURNAL OF THE COAL AND IRON TRADES.

Vol. CX.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 1915.

No. 2860.

The Fauna and Stratigraphy of the Kent Coal Field.

Dr. ARBER’S VIEWS.

A criticism of Mr. Bolton’s paper on “ The Fauna
and Stratigraphy of the Kent Coalfield ” (Colliery
Guardian, June 18 and 25) was delivered by Dr. Arbeh
at a meeting of the Manchester Geological and Mining
Society on Tuesday in last week. He said he regretted
Mr. Bolton was not present that afternoon, because it
was always difficult to discuss a paper in the absence of
the author. If Mr. Bolton had been with them he
should have liked to ask him to state the evidence for
several conclusions expressed in his paper, which
appeared to him to stand quite unsupported at present.
He also felt some diffidence in entering into a discussion,
because no less an authority than Prof. Boyd Dawkins
had already proclaimed in no uncertain voice that no
room was left for doubt as to the justice of Mr. Bolton’s
conclusions with regard to the classification of the beds;
that none who really understood the principles of geo-
logical classification could have a doubt on the matter.
He (Dr. Arber) found himself somewhat in a difficulty
because he ventured to disagree entirely with many of
the conclusions .contained in the paper in connection
with the stratigraphy of the Kent coal field; clearly,
therefore, the suggestion was that he did not under-
stand the principles of geological classification. To that
suggestion he would simply reply that he had never been
able to understand why Prof. Boyd Dawkins still held
to the principles which he advocated in the matter of
classification of the coal measures, in view of the results
of recent research.

Before going further into the matter he wished to express
his thanks to Mr. Bolton for having given him a paper
so full of new palaeontological material. Indirectly he (Dr.
Arber) believed he had had a hand in it, because he recom-
mended to the owners of the borings many years ago that
the invertebrate fossils, the fresh water mollusca, occurring
in the borings should be placed in Mr. Bolton’s hands for
description. He also believed that some of the specimens
described in the paper he had himself collected; at any
rate, all the material for such studies was placed at the dis-
posal of Mr. Bolton. But he was not competent to judge
of the value of the palaeontological side of the paper and
should, therefore, confine his remarks to certain questions
with regard to the stratigraphy of the coal field. There
were certain points upon which, he was thankful to think,
they were all agreed. None had yet introduced the night-
mare of the millstone grit in connection with the Kent coal
field. Mr. Bolton also, he understood, supported him in the
conclusion which he published for the first time last year
that the coal measures of Kent rested unconformably on the
lower carboniferous rocks.

With regard to the differences of opinion, it must be borne
in mind, in the first place, that this was a totally con-
cealed coal field, and that anything he had said on these
matters in the past was nothing more than purely pro-
visional.

The question had been approached from three different
points of view. Prof. Boyd Dawkins appeared to rest his
conclusions on lithological grounds, which in his opinion,
was one of the weakest stones on which it was possible
to build. Mr. Bolton based his conclusions on the inverte-
brate remains, the fresh water mollusca. That class of
evidence, he felt confident, would, in the future, yield very
valuable results. He himself inclined to the evidence of
fossil plants. Then again, there was a difference between
two schools of thought, the old and the new, with regard to
many questions in connection with the stratigraphy of coal
measures, and he might almost say upon all questions with
regard to the origin of and formation of coal. These
matters were in a state of flux at the present time. The
old school believed in the continuous sheet theory, that
the Radstock, Kent, and Boulonnais coal fields were origin-
ally united. The newer school did not say the continuous
sheet theory was never true, but they asserted that many
of our coal fields, especially those in the west and south
of England, were ab initio isolated; they were never united
one with the other. That view he strongly supported ;
if any reliance was to be placed upon the plant evidence

that fact must be regarded as already proved. He would
take one simple illustration. Mr. Bolton said that he
noticed that in the Kent coal field—of course, it happened in
almost all the large coal fields—there was sometimes an
underclay without any coal seam above it, and he regarded
that as evidence of contemporaneous denudation. If Mr.
Bolton really believed that, he should set out to prove it:

MR. T. Y. GREENER

X&La

III

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[Photo: Jas. Bacon, Newcastle*

The New President of the North of
England Institute of Mining and
Mechanical Engineers.

Mr. Thomas Young Greener, whose presidential
address before the members of the North of
England Institute of Mining and Mechanical
Engineers was given in our last issue, commenced
his professional career some 40 years ago under
Mr. Thomas Donglas, the agent for Messrs. Pease
and Partners’ group of collieries at Crook, county
Durham. Mr. Greener then took up a position as
assistant manager at the Pemberton Colliery, and
after remaining there for about 18 months he
accepted the position of surveyor and assistant
manager, under the late Mr. Arthur Chambers,
at the Thorncliffe group of collieries of Messrs.
Newton, Chambers and Company Limited. Further
experience was gained by Mr. Gre< nm- at the
Bainford Collieries, St. Helens, Lancashire, where
he was general manager for a period of about
seven years. He then removed to the Hucknall
Collieries, Notts, and was general manager there
for six years, until in 1891 he returned to Peases
West, Crook, to succeed Mr. Thomas Douglas, as
chief agent of Messrs. Pease and Partners’ group
of collieries. Towards the end of 1913, Mr. Greener
took up a similar position with the South Moor
Colliery Company Limited, Newcastle-on-Tyne,
who have an important group of collieries in the
Annfield Plain district of Durham County. Mr.
Greener is one of the best-known mining engineers
in the north country, and he has contributed
numerous papers—chiefly on the subject of coke
oven developments—to the Institution of Mining
Engineers and the North of _ England Institute
of Mining and Mechanical Engineers.

probably when he looked into the matter he would find that
the hypothesis rested on two false assumptions, and would
relegate it to the limbo of half-forgotten myths, of which
there were so many in connection with the origin of coal.

The next point was that Mr. Bolton spoke of the surface
of the paleozoic floor as a coal measure massif. The only
use of the term massif he was acquainted with, at any rate

in England, either geological or topographical, was to imply
a mountain mass or a chain or group of mountains. He
failed to see anything mountainous in the palaeozoic floor of
Kent. On the contrary, as he endeavoured to point out in
his paper on the Kent coal field published last year, the
palaeozoic floor of Kent- was an inclined plane of an
extremely regular type. Looking at the model published
in Mr. Bolton’s paper, he could not see anything moun-
tainous in the surface; neither did he see represented on
that model the inclined plane which, beyond any doubt,
existed in the field.

One of the boldest assertions in the paper, and there were
many bold assertions, was that the carboniferous limestone
floor could not lie at a greater depth than 3,500 ft. Why?
No reason of any sort, as far as he could see, was given in
the paper. In his own paper published last year, he (Dr.
Arber) pointed out that the thickness of the coal measures
was at least 3,700 ft., perhaps 4,000, and to that must be
added 1,000 ft. of cover. Was Mr. Bolton aware that his
depth had already been exceeded in the Maydensole boring
without going out of the coal—2,565 ft. of coal measures had
been proved, and to that they must add 941ft. of cover,
making it 3,506 below Ordnance Datum.

He wished to call attention briefly to one or two state-
ments about which there could hardly be any doubt as to
Mr. Bolton's inaccuracy. The first one he-mentioned because
he happened to be responsible for the records in permanent
form of all these borings. Referring to the Trapham boring,
Mr. Bolton said his (Dr. Arber’s) record of 450 ft. of carboni-
ferous limestone at the lower part was “ certainly incorrect.”
He had already dealt with that matter at some length in the
Colliery Guardian for the previous week, and need not enter
into it more fully.

Another assertion was this, “ Dr. Arber does not recognise
the existence of any of the lower measures at all.” From
that it would appear that Mr. Bolton had not read either of
his papers on the Kent coal field published last year. In the
one on the geology of the field, a considerable space was taken
up with a description of these lower measures. Then, in the
paper published by the Geological Society, he took some
pains to point out—in fact, to prove, for the first time—the
existence of this middle coal measure horizon. Bnt perhaps
the most unfortunate reference in the paper was to the work
of one who, unfortunately, passed away some years ago—
M. Marcel Bertrand, the French geologist, one of the
greatest names in connection with work on coal measures.
In his paper Mr. Bolton said the conclusion arrived at by
M. Bertrand was that the trough passed under the Channel,
that the Kent coal field might be an extension of that of the
Pas-de-Calais, and that a further westward extension might
be found in the coal fields of Bristol and South Wales. Well,
he happened to know M. Bertrand’s great classic very well,
and he could find no passage where anything of the sort was
said. What M. Bertrand did say was this, that the folds
governing these fields in France and England were continuous
—but that was a very different thing from what Mr. Bolton
suggested. M. Bertrand’s words were : “ The Dover coal
basin is distinct from that of the Pas-de-Calais, and the axis
of Northern Boulonnais (Saddle of Ferques) is not the pro-
longation of the axis of Artois.” With that statement he
cordially agreed.

He had to confess that he could not follow Mr. Bolton in
his remarks on the axes in the south-east of England. There
was no doubt that most of those axes—he did not say all—
were continuous across the Channel into France, and that they
governed the coal field, but there was much doubt as to
which folds in England corresponded to those in France. So
far as the Kent coal measures were concerned, there was only
one east and west anticline known at present. That formed
the northern boundary of the coal field, and no doubt a
similar fold limited the coal field to the south, but it lay far
out to sea beneath the waters of the English Channel, and it
was very unlikely they would ever know its exact position.
But what about the north and south folds? Mr. Bolton’s
paper was strangely silent on that point. Surely he did not
overlook the existence of such folds, when they were an
inevitable corollary of the east and west folds, particularly
where they lay somewhat apart. What did he imagine
bounded the coal field to the west? They knew already the
north and south fold, and they could almost lay their finger
on the western outcrop of the field.

In his paper last year he ventured to point out certain
reasons which led him to suppose that a similar north and
south fold limited the coal field to the east, under the Straits