August 11, 1916.

THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN.

263

J. W. BAIRD AND COMPANY,

PITWOOD IMPORTERS,

WEST HARTLEPOOL,

YEARLY CONTRACTS ENTERED INTO WITH COLLIERIES.

OSBECK & COMPANY LIMITED,
PIT-TIMBER MERCHANTS,
NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE.

SUPPLY ALL KINDS OF COLLIERY TIMBER.

Telegrams—“ Osbecks, Newcastle-on-Tyne.”

* * For other Miscellaneous Advertisements see Last
White Page.

Collimi <6iun*tlhn

AND

Journal of the Coal and Iron Tradas.

Joint Editors—

J. V. ELSDEN, D.Sc. (Load.), F.G.S.
HUBEET GREENWELL, F.S.S., Assoc.M.I.M.E.

(At present on Active Service).

LONDON, FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 1916.

The London coal trade continues weak. House-
hold qualities are coming forward in better quantities,
but merchants still report large numbers of orders
on the books unexecuted. The seaborne market is
fairly supplied.

In the Tyne and Wear trade the market has been
fairly well maintained, chiefly through tonnage being
in better supply. The only noteworthy feature of
the quiet business in Lancashire is the resumption
of shipments to Dublin. A rather better surplus in
Yorkshire is helping to extinguish arrears of house
coal orders. Long-distance traffic is still subject to
delays. Cardiff reports extreme quietness, with
concessions offered by middlemen ; and the same con-
dition exists in Scotland, principally on account of
scarcity of tonnage.

The freight market is without any appreciable
change. Coastwise shipments from north-eastern
ports are practically non- existent.

The Scottish Coal Conciliation Board discussed
the miners’ application for an advance in wages at
Glasgow on Monday, but failed to agree, and the
meeting was adjourned until August 22. Lord
Strathclyde was the neutral chairman.

A special conference of the South Wales Miners’
Federation at Cardiff, on Saturday, quickly dis-
posed of the holiday difficulty. Mr. James Winstone,
president, urged the necessity for a revision of the
decision. A motion to rescind the previous resolu-
tion and continue at work was carried by an over-
whelming majority on a show of hands. The
minority demanded the roll call, and on this the
motion was passed by 2,131 to 892 votes.

Durham miners are receiving the highest wrages
ever known in the county—102J per cent, abbve the
1879 basis. An increase of 13J per cent, follows the
accountants’ ascertainment.

A committee t appointed to consider the matter
reported that no general system of relay holidays is
practicable for munition workers. The Ministry of
Munitions proposes a rest period in lieu of the
cancelled Bank holiday.

Exports of coal, coke, and manufactured fuel
in July aggregated 3,574,137 tons, of the value of
£4,824,952. Similar exports amounted to 3,731,932
tons, valued at £3,241,651, and 6,917,853 tons,
valued at £4,719,839, in the corresponding months
of 1915 and 1914.

The average value of coal, coke and manu-
factured fuel exported in July was 26s. ll-9d.
per ton, compared with 17s. 4’4d. in July 1915, and
13s. 7*7d. in July 1914. The average value during
the first seven months was 23s. 4*3d. per ton, as com-
pared with 16s. 2*6d. and 13s. 9*6d. in the corre-
sponding periods of 1915 and 1914.

Of the total exports of coal (3,304,117 tons) during
July, the mean value of the large coal was 31s. 0*9d.;
through-and-through (unscreened), 23s. l-5d. ; and
small coal, 22s. l’9d. The average value of all
kinds of coal exported was 26s. 9*5d., as compared
with 17s. 0’3d. in July 1915. Otherwise divided, it
realised the following:—Steam coal, 27s. 9-5d. ; gas
coal, 22s. 0*6d. ; anthracite, 27s. ll’4d. ; house-
hold, 27s. 6Td. ; other sorts, 25s. 10-8d. The
average value of the coke exported was 32s. 3*Id. per
ton, and of the manufactured fuel 26s. 7-2d. per ton.

The South Wales Coal Conciliation Board, which
met on Thursday, failed to agree on the respective

applications of the workmen and employers for a
12j- per cent, increase and 15 per cent, reduction in
the general wage rate, and referred the matter to the
independent chairman at a meeting to be held on the
24th inst.

Gradually evidence is accumulating

Recent towards the illumination of that
Coal Field interesting problem, the nature of
Researches.] the palaeozoic floor which lies buried
beneath the red rocks of the Midland
area ; but we are still a long way from the complete
solution of the numerous problems concerned. The
question is highly abstruse, and cannot be answered
with certainty in the absence of a more complete
system of deep borings, somewhat on the scale that
has been carried out in the Campine area. That
such systematic boring has not been attempted in
the concealed coalfields of this country is due to our
national system, which has hitherto left all questions
of this kind to individual initiative. Whether the
reconstruction process, which public opinion seems
at length to be demanding as a result of the serious
deficiencies which the war has brought to light, will
ultimately include an intelligent survey of our hidden
coal resources at the expense of the State, remains to
be seen. In the meantime we must be thankful for
the work which is being done in this direction by
the Geological Survey on the one hand and by
private research on the other.

We propose to consider some of this work which
has lately been published, and notably the elaborate
paper recently read before the Midland Institute at
Doncaster by Prof. Fearnsides, and the important
contribution given by Dr. Newell Arber recently
to the South Staffordshire Institute at Birmingham,
fairly full reports of which have appeared in our
columns. In connection with the paper by Prof.
Fearnsides, dealing with “ Some Effects of Earth
Movement on the Coal Measures of the Sheffield
District,” it is clear that an enormous amount of
labour has been involved in this investigation. This
paper is an object lesson in the methods of modern
geological research. The author states that its
inception was largely due to the stimulating influence
of Dr. Walcot Gibson’s Survey memoir, in which
the sub-surface contour method had been so success-
fully applied to the reconstruction of the old land
surface at'the base of the permian. This method is
somewhat new in geological research, and is, of
course, only possible where accurate borehole
information exists. Dr. Strahan, director of the
Geological Survey of Great Britain, had previously
shown how the contour method can be applied to the
interpretation of borehole information. All that is
necessary is a sufficient number of borehole records,
and that, of course, does not exist. But this does
not form a serious obstacle to our making use of
what we have, and thanks to the enterprise and
industry of the committee of the Midland Institute,
and the publication of the records of borings and
sinkings in 1914, there is now available a very con-
siderable mass of information awaiting the inter-
pretation which their analysis affords. Prof. Fearn-
sides has, therefore, been fortunate in the possession
of these facilities, and he has lost no time in testing
their value by using them for drawing sub-surface
contours, not of the coal measure surface, but of the
coal seams themselves. Dr. Walcot Gibson’s map
in the Geological Survey memoir shows the former,
and this map we reproduced, inadvertently without
explanation, in Prof. Fearnsides’ paper, in order to
show the location of the boreholes referred to.

Prof. Fearnsides’ map of the contours of the
Barnsley seam shows that to the east of Yorkshire this
seam lies in two basins—the Brierley basin, between
Castleford and Conisborough, forming a marked
depression between Wakefield and Doncaster; and
the Maltby basin forming an oval hollow between
Sheffield and Doncaster. To the south of Yorkshire,
on the other hand, the structure of the coal field
changes, and in the place of basin-like depressions
we have a series of anticlinal flexures, on which the
magnesian limestone lies unconformably in a gently
sloping plane, dipping gently to the north-east.
Among the many interesting conclusions brought out
by this investigation, Prof. Fearnsides draws atten-

tion to the important part played by Charnian
movements in determining the lie of all the coal
fields about the Pennine Chain. It is indeed highly
gratifying to see the rich results that have already
followed from the application of geometrical methods
to coal field geology.

In Prof. Arber’s paper, on the “ Structure of the
South Staffordshire Coal Field,” we have an example
of geological reasoning based upon the more familiar
ground of fossil evidence. It is perhaps unfortunate
for this line of enquiry that the subject is so highly
specialised that few can properly estimate the true
significance of the available data. Dr. Arber is an
acknowledged authority on paheobotanical matters,
and his studies have led him to certain ‘ conclusions
respecting the Midland coal fields which differ
entirely from the usually accepted views, and have,
if correct, an important bearing upon the under-
ground structure of the concealed areas of palaeozoic
rocks lying to the west of the Midland area. Dr. Arber
has studied the stratigraphy of the carboniferous
rocks of Warwickshire, South Staffordshire, Wyre
Forest and Colebrookdale. Whether we consider
the unproductive red rocks' of these coal fields as
Stephanian, as Dr. Arber suggests, appears to be
of small practical importance to the coal prospector;
but his conclusions respecting the tectonics of this
area possess undoubted practical significance. Not
very long ago the current notion of coal-measure
geology was that of a more or less uniform sheet of
sandstones, shales and coal seams, which was
assumed to have been continuous over a large area,
but was subsequently broken up into detached basins
as a result of folding and denudation. Dr. Arber,
however, sees reason to reject the continuous sheet
theory so far as these isolated Midland coal fields
are concerned. He believes, for example, that the
Forest of Dean, South Wales and Pembrokeshire
coal fields from the very first have been isolated
basins. The same he thinks true of the Welsh
borderland coal fields, each of which is maintained
to have been deposited in a separate basin. Similarly
with respect to the relationship of the Potteries
coal field to that of Cannock Chase. The evidence
upon which he relies is believed to preclude the
possibility that any of these coal fields ever formed
part of one continuous sheet. This evidence is
based upon the establishment of certain palaeo-
botanical horizons, into the value of which none but
the initiated can enter. But this conclusion, if true,
has far-reaching practical consequences, and involves
the conception of a series of “ horsts ” and “ graben,”
which brings forcibly to mind the conditions generally
assumed to have prevailed in the coal fields of
Rhenish-W estphalia.

According to this view the visible coal fields of
South Staffordshire, Warwickshire, and those of the
Welsh Borderland are “ horsts,” and are separated
from each other by “ graben ” in which the produc-
tive coal measures would be too deeply buried for
practical working. The practical significance of this
assumption is obvious. In Dr. Arber’s own words,
“ on the continuous sheet (anticline) theory, the South
Staffordshire productive measures will sink deeper
and deeper under the concealed ground to the east
and west of the boundary faults, until they begin to
rise again in the visible Warwickshire and Wyre
Forest-Coalbrookdale coalfields.” On the “horst”
theory much of the area between the boundary faults
would be practically barren, and the prospector’s
problem would consist in first locating the original
outcrops and boundary faults, in order to define
the limits of the intervening barren ground.
If one has to choose between the two methods of
research illustrated above, the preference must
certainly be given to the contour method wherever it
is possible of application. The authority of botanical
zones cannot be considered to have yet reached the
same degree of trustworthiness as the evidence of
geometical structure ascertained by boreholes. But
unfortunately, we are not yet in a position to be able
to apply borehole reasoning to the area discussed in
Dr. Arber’s paper. It is, however, difficult to
imagine that both the conclusions arrived at in these
papers can be correct. It is not easy to associate the
continuous sheet or anticline theory with so wide an
area as that which connected the Lancashire and