The Halifax Coal Strata

Abstract

The Yorkshire coal field is divided into three horizons, viz., Lower, Middle, and Upper. The Lower Coal-Measures appear to have first been worked at Halifax, and thence the mines were gradually extended around the out-crop of the coal-field, and the two workable beds of coal wrought in them became known as the “Halifax Hard and Soft Bed coals.” The Halifax coal strata form a compact group of rocks, consisting of beds of shale, sandstone, rag, bind, coal, seat-earth, gannister, ironstone and fossiliferous beds of marine and freshwater origin, the whole being enclosed between the Rough Rock at the base and crowned by the Northowram and Elland Flagrock. These strata are also well known to geologists on account of the great number and variety of their fossil contents. The marine beds overlying the Hard Bed coal have yielded a large number of marine fossil shells and fish-remains to our local collectors, and more recently the rich and various assortment of Fossil Plants shewing their internal structure found in our coal-balls, have extended the fame of our Halifax Coal strata over the civilized world. The conditions attending the formation of the different beds were of a very varied character, and the area in which they were deposited was sometimes a land surface, covered by extensive forests of lepidodendrons, sigillarias, calamites, cycads and ferns in great variety; at others a great estuary inhabited by molluscs and fishes, and into which the rivers of the period brought down spoils from the ancient land, such …