(FIGURE 429. Ground-plan of a fossil forest, Parkfield Colliery, near
Wolverhampton, showing the position of 73 trees in a quarter of an acre.)
It has been remarked that if, instead of working in the dark, the miner was
accustomed to remove the upper covering of rock from each seam of coal, and to
expose to the day the soils on which ancient forests grew, the evidence of their
former growth would be obvious. Thus in South Staffordshire a seam of coal was
laid bare in the year 1844, in what is called an open work at Parkfield
colliery, near Wolverhampton. In the space of about a quarter of an acre the
stumps of no less than 73 trees with their roots attached appeared, as shown in
Figure 429, some of them more than eight feet in circumference. The trunks,
broken off close to the root, were lying prostrate in every direction, often
crossing each other. One of them measured 15, another 30 feet in length, and
others less. They were invariably flattened to the thickness of one or two
inches, and converted into coal. Their roots formed part of a stratum of coal
ten inches thick, which rested on a layer of clay two inches thick, below which
was a second forest resting on a two-foot seam of coal.
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