160. The mine worked is generally supposed to be identical with the Rushby Park of St. Helens, the Arley of Wigan, and the Royley of Oldham. The Hagside Pit is 760 yards to the deep of the one that adjoins the railway; being 280 yards in depth to the coal, and 300 to the bottom of the sump-hole. There is nothing of particular geological interest in connection with the mine, more than is usually met with in coal-mines. We find Anthracomyæ in a layer, about four inches above the coal; and in the strata between the "two-feet coal" and the main bed, the author had seen several good specimens of Sigillaria. These strata vary from three feet to seven yards in thickness. The average thickness of the mine worked is four feet six inches. In giving his opinion on the proving of faults, the author confined his remarks to the kind commonly met with in the Lancashire coal-field. The faults generally met with in this county are dislocations, whether they are large or small ones; that is, the strata are broken up, and that the coal and other measures are often found the same on each side of the fault-vein. Suppose a fault is met with. It is easily known whether it is a down- or up-throw; if the former, the coal not unfrequently dips a little, for a short distance, before you arrive at it; if the latter, it oftener rises to it. But supposing you arrive, without any previous indication, at a fault, the direction is generally known by the way in which the striæ, or two sides of the fault-vein, commonly called the "slippy partings," point. If a down fault is met with, the direction is away from you, if up, you touch the vein first at the floor of the place where you are driving.
2. "The Ventilation of Mines." Mr. Joseph Goodwin. As the recent catastrophe at the Hartley New Pit has called forth the sympathy of almost every subject within the British realms, and appears at the present time to be exciting the minds of all engaged in the trade, the author thought it was not out of place to consider how far it is safe to trust to a bratticed shaft for ventilating coal-mines. The system of working a colliery with only one shaft presents an unfavourable aspect, viewed from whatever point it may be; but probably the system is more at fault, in so far as it affects the ventilation of a colliery worked upon this principle, and the risk to which it exposes both employer and employed, than if viewed from any other point. The author denounced this system through a thorough conviction that it not only immeasurably increases the risk to both employer and employed, but that, pecuniarily considered, no real advantage occurs from it of working a colliery.
FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE.
The Whales of the Antwerp Crag were made by M. Van Beneden the subject of his most interesting address at the last public sitting of the Belgian Academy, in which he gave a sketch of the important paleontological discoveries made during the recent excavations in the fortifications of Antwerp, and illustrated the subject by the interesting information he had acquired in a recent travel in Germany for the purpose of elucidating the history of the numerous fossil cetaceans that have been found in the soil of the environs of Antwerp. Drawing a comparison of the riches of the Musée Bourbon of Naples in its treasures of antiquities from Herculaneum and Pompeii, with the fossil treasures of Antwerp, he proceeded to narrate the geological history of that district. "At the very place," he said, "where to-day roar lions, tigers, and bears in cages barred with iron, in times of
