The South Staffordshire Coalfield/Conclusion
CONCLUSION.
No one can be more sensible than myself of the deficiencies of the preceding pages. The work was executed on the Ordnance map of the scale of one inch to the mile, there being no other of similar accuracy on a larger scale. A more detailed survey might have been made had there been a map on the scale of six inches to the mile, such as that of the Townland Survey of Ireland (by the aid of which the geological survey of Ireland is carried on), or the similar map now 1n progress in the north of England. Such maps show every natural and artificial feature on its proper scale, and leave room for the insertion of all the requisite data in a distinct form, and without any distortion.[1] With such a map it would have been possible to have had a separate survey of the Thick coal, showing its depth below the surface at any locality, the nature and magnitude of the faults traversing it, and the extent of injured coal or barren ground caused by them; the places where the coal was injured by trap rock, and the amount of the damage; the districts, such as the large swamp in the centre of the coalfield, where it is now under water, the probable area and depth of that water, and consequently the power necessary to drain it; the spaces over which the Thick coal has been either partly or wholly extracted, and those where it is still untouched; and all other needful and useful information respecting it might thus have been brought together in a compendious form of the highest importance and utility to the practical miner. Every other important bed of coal and ironstone could have been laid down on its separate map, showing its extent, depth, thickness, richness, and the places where it had and where it had not been gotten.
Every one who has had anything to do with coal mining, even as a spectator, must be aware of the great waste of money, labour, and materials, consequent on the division of property among many small owners, each having different and opposite interests. Were the South Staffordshire coal-field now untouched and the property of one individual, there is no doubt that, as far as the mere economical extraction of its minerals is concerned, it might be worked under one well-considered system with infinitely less cost and far greater profit than it has been. The subdivision of property has, of course, great advantages on its side to counter-balance this disadvantage; but the carrying out such a survey as that I have named, while it would not at all interfere with the advantages arising from the subdivision of property, would render it possible to avoid all or most part of the disadvantage, because every one would know the exact state of the ground around him, and mutual agreements might thus be entered into as to the time and method of each working his own piece of land to the best advantage.
In the meanwhile it is hoped that the present general survey of the South Staffordshire coal-field will be found of considerable practical utility, since it has enabled us to combine into a general view much information that had hitherto been only scattered piece-meal about the district, to give a little more definite and common direction, perhaps, to the ideas hitherto floating loosely in many men's minds, as also to warn men off the districts where costly speculations will be almost sure to be unrewarded, and in some degree to point to those where they are most likely to be successful.
In conclusion, I have to make my acknowledgments to my many kind friends in South Staffordshire for much assistance, without which the survey could never have been rendered so accurate and complete even as it now is. I never made a single application to any landowner, coalowner, or ironmaster of the district, or to their agents, ground bailiffs, and men of business, for any species of information, that was not instantly and courteously responded to in the most ample manner. 'To enumerate the names of persons I have been thus indebted to would be to give a list of a large part of the population of the district; and is therefore obviously impossible. It is, however, only justice to state, that when the survey of the district was commenced, several of the principal faults traversing it had been laid down on large parish maps by some members of the Dudley Geological Society. Messrs W. Sparrow and H. Beckett had done this for the district between Wolverhampton. Walsall, and Wednesbury, and Mesers. S. H. Blackwell and C. Twamley for the district around Dudley. The results of their labours were freely communicated, and after being verified, are now published in our maps. Several other gentlemen have been mentioned by name in the preceding Memoir as having afforded important information, and many more might have been mentioned, but that the information they so kindly gave became worked into the general account of the district, and did not relate to any particularly prominent and salient points of its structure.
- ↑ After some years' experience in working on the 6-inch map of Ireland. I can speak authoritatively as to the importance and value of such a map for geological surveys.