856 THE COLLIERY GUARDIAN. November 3, 1916. Coal Measures.—The area of coal measures revised by Mr. Macgregor in the Crindledyke and Morningside dis- trict forms the eastern margin of the Wishaw coal field, and is faulted on the north-east against rocks of mill- stone grit age. The highest coal present is the Ell, which outcrops a little to the west of Morningside Station. The higher seams—thfe Ell, Main, Splint, and Virtue well—are worked out, and coal is at present raised at Chapel and Morningside collieries from the Kiltongue, Lower Drum- gray, and Smithy seams. The nomenclature of the coals in this and the adjoining areas has led to some confu- sion; a table of local names is given below. Morningside. 1. Upper ...Upper Drumgray Drumgray Low er . ‘ “ Drumgray Smithy Castlehill. 2 ft. Coal, Ball or ... Upper Drumgray ...MidDrumgray 4 ft. Coal or Mid... r . Drumgray ...Lower ... Smithy or Lower ... Drumgray Drumgray Palaeontological Work. Much of the palaeontological work has been nection with the surveying now in progress, and with the. preparation of forthcoming memoirs. Mr. Pringle has drawn up the fossil lists for several sheet explana- tions, and has named large collections of ordovician and carboniferous fossils from North Wales, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire. He has also examined and reported upon the fossils obtained by him in a previous year from the deep boring near Little Missenden. Mr. Pringle examined several deep borings in Kent, and obtained records and specimens which will be utilised in a memoir now in course of preparation. As a contribution to this work, Dr. Kitchin has named extensive series of the jurassic and cretaceous fossils. This projected account supplements that dealing with the hidden mesozoic rocks of Kent already published in a previous memoir. In Scotland 224 fossils were collected and registered during the year. Most of them w’ere obtained from the carboniferous areas of Central Scotland, and they ranee Shotts. Furnace Coal. Laigh Coal. Smith y. in com HYDRAULIC PACKING AT BALLARPUR COLLIERY, CENTRAL PROVINCES.* By R. S. Davies. Hydraulic packing was first introduced at Ballarpur Colliery in March 1913. It is an ideal place for this form of packing, for many reasons, the three most important of which are :— (1) Good packing material is close at hand; (2) the water available is fairly free from acid, and does no damage to the pipes; (3) coal is at shallow depth, consequently boreholes can be put down with little expense, and, as the head is not great, wear and tear of the pipes is saved. The reasons for the introduction of hydraulic pack- ing are as follow :—Above the seam, extending to the surface soil, is a soft coarse-grained sandstone full of water; over a certain area of the rise this sandstone is extremely soft; thre< year from the Wardha River of three t< tion inundate an area under which hs workings extend; and lastly, the sear 52 ft. 6 in. thick, two portions of whic an upper portion 24 ft. 6 in. from th seam and 8 ft. thick, and a lower per part of the seam), also 8 ft., leaving 16 the workable portions, which, with the 20 ft., are composed of shales and coal To extract all or the greater part of two workable sections, it was decided t portion first, and to adopt hydraulic intact the roof, to prevent strata and si flooding the mine, and as a preventive Flushing Material. The material packed is sand, which ance to compression is concerned, is obtained from the bed of the Wardha only 3,300 ft. from the borehole cont conveying the packing material to ' workings. It is a hard sand, partly co and trap, and is loaded through screen; river by women. These screens are j vent big stuff, such as lumps of clay, st to 1. After working this for two weeks it was decided to stop flushing sand down No. 1 return shaft, and to put a 6 in. borehole down by Calyx drill to the work- ings intended to be hydraulically packed. Borehole. The borehole is 231 ft. to the top of the upper work- able portion of the seam. In this borehole a 5 in. wrought iron pipe is fixed. About 2,500 gals, of water per hour was made in it, but was stopped by pumping in cement around the bottom of the pipe. Sand Flushing. The present system of flushing sand to the workings is similar to that employed previously at No. 1 return shaft. At the borehole below the surface of the ground, At the borehole below the surface of the ground, Fig. 2.—Plan and Section of Straight Longwall Face. qg..ati.s!P Z SBCHM ON A 8 Sand c 5ctca Water Pipe* of System of Extracting q i) Bin AT <0 Ji y-Baf/er,/ Bore Hole. I Fig. 3.—Plan and Section * 5 diameter Sand Pip* tn Bore Jiofe y* BacJrt-np ctea's r TefephoM* Fig. 1.—Section of Sand Bin from the calciferous sandstone to the coal measures. The most noteworthy collection is from Skipsey’s marine band in the coal measures nea? Hamilton, which con- tains some remarkably well-preserved specimens of Chonetes. LAW INTELLIGENCE. HOUSE OF LORDS.—October 30. Before Lord Haldane (presiding) and others. Compensation Case Appeal. Hepburn v. Lochgelly Iron and Coal Company.—This was an appeal from a decision of the Second Division of the Court of Session, Scotland. At Dunfermline, Sheriff-Substitute Umpherston, as arbitrator under the Workmen’s Compen- sation Act, 1906, found that Mrs. Mary Hepburn or Kirk (widow of the deceased workman, Daniel Kirk) was entitled to £261. Counsel for the appellant company stated that on December 28, 1914, Kirk and others pulled an empty truck in consequence of the breakage of the haulage rope, and Kirk afterwards complained of the stiffness of the job, which had to be performed while the men were crouched. Kirk died of heart failure the same evening. No notice of this was given to the company, as required by the Act, until after the New Year holidays. The arbitrator held that notice as required by the Act had been given as soon as practicable, that the delay arose from a reasonable cause, and that the company had not been prejudiced. The Second Division differed from the arbitrator regarding the delay in giving notice, but held that appellants had not been nrejudicbd in that matter. The House of Lords, without calling on respondent’s counsel, dismissed the case with costs. mi LnjLl ■- Fig. 4.—Plan of N.E. District, showing Sand Packing. a .small bin holding about 20 tons is situated, under which a short trough runs to a funnel fixed around the top of 5 in. wrought iron flushing pipes. Into the opposite end of this trough is a 5 in. water pipe (fig. 1). This water flushes the sand down the pipe into the workings, and is obtained from four iron tanks at No. 1 pit top holding about 6,400 gals, of water. This head is 33 ft., and is water pumped direct from the pit bottom sump. Sand is regulated into the trough by a door at the bottom of the bin, which is opened or shut by a man turning a threaded rod; the same man also regulates the water. Communication is estab- lished between the man regu- lating the sand at the bin and the man in charge at the hydraulic packing face, by means of a telephone. At present the horizontal length is about 700 ft., and vertical head about 231 ft. The quantity of water to sand used is 1’16 to 1. The velocity of the flushing material is about 24’3 ft. per second, and the sand is flushed into the workings at the rate of 2’23 tubs or 2-34 tons per minute, from 300 to 400 tubs being packed daily. Barricades. The flushing material completely fills all goaves, there being no space near the roof, and is retained in its place • underground by wooden barricades made of rough 2 in. planks about 2 ft. apart attached to posts (see fig. 2). Untanred brattice cloth (Hessian cloth) is nailed to the planks, through which the water drains. This water, before reaching the pump, is again drained through two lots of brattice cloth. The pump is a Worthington, and Seven Miners Entombed.—Seven miners were entombed by a heavy fall of roof at the Holditch sinkings of the Brymbo Steel Company, Chesterton, North Staffordshire. Five men were injured and three of them died. Grimsby Coal Exports. — Returns for the week ended October 27 show that the coal exported from Grimsby con- sisted of the following :—Foreign : To Esbjerg, 1,055 tons; Haugesnnd, 131; Dieppe, 1,723: Korsoer, 595; and Rouen, 1,683 tons—'making a total of 4,586 tons foreign, against 5,804 tons foreign and 745 tons coastwise during the corre- sponding week of last year. into the pipe and choking it. The tubs are hauled to the borehole by endless haulage. Part of the sand hauled is stocked for use during the rains, when, owing to the flooded state of the river, sand is not available. Horizontal Length to Vertical Head. When hydraulic packing was first started, sand was taken down to the bottom of No. 1 return shaft in 5 in. wrought iron pipes, and from there to the workings in 5 in. cast iron pipes. The horizontal length is about 11,305 ft., and the vertical height about 231ft., making the horizontal length about five to six times the vertical head, which some experts think is about the limit. For this length the amount of water to sand used was 3-3 * From Transactions of the Mining and Geological Insti- tute of India.