Page:The South Staffordshire Coalfield - Joseph Beete Jukes - 1859.djvu/28

12 through a mass of sandstones and marls belonging to this formation, 262 yards 2 feet, or 728 feet thick, or, deducting the odd 28 feet for surface drift, &c., 700 feet of Permian, a good part of which at all events, if not the whole, must be below the 660 feet passed through at the "Ruck of Stones." What makes the section of these pits most remarkable, however, is that there occurred in them a small seam of true Permian coal. The following is an abstract of the upper part of the section:—

I saw masses of the fire-clays Nos. 3 and 6 on the pit bank while these pits were being sunk, and they did not differ either in colour or in any mineral character from the fire-clays of the coal-measures, except in having small] calcareous nodules interspersed through them. These nodules were carefully searched for fossils, but none were discovered. In the red sandstones below, however, numerous rough casts of the large stems of plants, something like rude sigillariæ occurred. Part of the 10-inch coal was shaly and rotten, but about two inches of it is a beautifully bright coal, highly bituminous, very brittle, with curious circular concentric concretionary markings,

At Lord Dartmouth's pits at West Bromwich Heath, there appears to be 268 yards 2 feet, or 806 feet of Permian rocks, alternations of red sandstone and marl, but without any grey fire-clay and coal. At the Lyng colliery there was 550 feet, at the Lewisham pits 315 feet, and at the Terrace pits, close to the fault, they had 135 feet of "red rock" (see Horizontal Sections, sheet 25. No. 7).

It appears, then, that there must be in the neighbourhood of West Bromwich a total thickness of 1,500 fect at the very least, composed of the rocks of this formation.

I have yet to describe the calcareous conglomerate mentioned above. This is well shown at Barnford Hill, two miles south of Oldbury, and thence to Brand Hall. It is composed almost