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The line was also, by the same forced deviation, prevented passing through the Lancashire coal-field, and the engineer was compelled to carry it across the Sankey valley, at a point where the waters of the brook had dug out an excessively deep channel through the marl-beds of the district.
In North Carolina, the late Professor Emmons has described the strata of the Chatham coal-field, which correspond in age to those near Richmond, in Virginia. In beds underlying them he has met with three jaws of a small insectivorous mammal which he has called Dromatherium sylvestre, closely allied to Spalacotherium.
Wonderful accumulations of fish remains are found at the base of the system, in the bone-bed of the Bristol coal-field, as well as in a similar bed at Armagh. Many fishes were armed with powerful conical teeth, but the majority, like the existing Port Jackson shark, were possessed of massive palates, suited in some cases for crushing, and in others for cutting. Archegosaurus minor.
The city of Scranton lies in the centre of the Lackawanna coal-field, in the State of Pennsylvania. Year by year the suburbs of the city creep up the sides of the surrounding hills, like the waters of a rising lake. Standing at any point on this shore line of human habitations, you can look out across the wide landscape and count a score of coal-breakers within the limits of your first glance.
But one of the most curious passages in Dudley's Metallum Martis, is the following picture of the Dudley coal-field: "Now let me show some reasons that induced me to undertake these inventions. At present, for more than ten miles round Dudley Castle, iron works of one kind or another are constantly at work; no remains of mighty woodland are to be found.
The coal-field extends between Essen and Dortmund a distance of 30 miles east and west, and exhibits a series of about one hundred and thirty seams, with an aggregate of 300 feet of coal. It is estimated that this coal-field alone contains no less than 39,200 millions of tons of coal.
As the address of 1862 was passing through the press, I was able to mention, in a note, the discovery of a large Labyrinthodont, with well-ossified vertebrae, in the Edinburgh coal-field.
Wherever a coal-field now exists, there must formerly have been free access for a great river, or for a shallow sea, bearing sediment in the shape of sand and mud. When the coal-forest area became slowly depressed, the waters must have spread over it, and have deposited their burden upon the surface of the bed of coal, in the form of layers, which are now converted into shale, or sandstone.
The student may refer to Mr. Hull's measurement of faults, observed in the Lancashire coal-field, where the vertical displacement has amounted to thousands of feet, and yet where all the superficial inequalities which must have resulted from such movements have been obliterated by subsequent denudation.
Archibald Geikie in Ayrshire have shown that some of the volcanic rocks in that county are of Permian age, and it appears highly probable that the uppermost portion of Arthur's Seat in the suburbs of Edinburgh marks the site of an eruption of the same era. Two classes of contemporaneous trap-rocks occur in the coal-field of the Forth, in Scotland.
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