in great quantity, as from the shattered condition of the strata, the coal is soon lost without a clue to lead to its recovery. It has no regular roof or floor, but is rather inclosed by broken side-walls, and sometimes is found lodged in confused nests and heaps: it is now seldom wrought.[1]
The edges of these highly inclined and broken strata may be traced by a very low scar, [2] or kind of escarpment slightly rising towards the east and running parallel to, and along the base of the greenstone hills from Melmerby towards Kirkland.
The limestone accompanying these coal measures is but in thin beds, and equally dislocated and shattered, so that no order of superposition can distinctly be made out. I saw it at one place nearly vertical, its dip being to the west; it was on the north side of the Ardale water, as marked in the map; it lay between two beds of sandstone that had the appearance of coal grits, and within a few yards of the slate and greenstone which are here confusedly mixed together. The lowest grit bed touched the slate.
Vertical coal measures are seen touching the greenstone at a section in Ousby Beck at the corner of the highest in closures in ascending the stream from the village of Ousby.
The following are localities where coal has been dug within the limits above mentioned.
Melmerby Lane Head, Hag Gate, Gale Hall, and Ousby Town Head, &cc.
Limestone is dug near Hag Gate, Gale Hall, and Ardale water, &c.
- ↑ Similar cases of beds of coal becoming vertical by dislocation will be recognized in the perpendicular bed of coal described by Mr. Bakewell at Bradford near Manchester, (Geol. Trans. vol. ii. p. 283,) and in the Mendip collieries near Mells, where a bed of coal is said to be bent backwards to the shape of the letter Z. I have this fact on good authority but have not seen it.
- ↑ See Section, Plate 5, No. 2, letter A.
