I. On the extension of the coal-fields beneath the newer formations of England; and the succession of physical changes whereby the coal-measures have been reduced to their present dimensions

Abstract

In this paper the author, embodying with his own the observations of previous writers on the physical geology of Great Britain, especially those of Murchison, Godwin-Austen, Ramsay, Phillips, and the late Professor Jukes, showed that the Coal-measures were originally distributed over large tracts of England, to the north and to the south of a central ridge or barrier of Old Silurian and Cambrian rocks, which stretched across the country from North Wales and Shropshire into the Eastern Counties, skirting the southern margin of the South Staffordshire Coal-field. This barrier, or ridge, was a land-surface till the close of the Carboniferous period.