COAL UNDER GRANITE.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXIII, Issue 3132, 31 July 1867, Page 4

COAL UNDER GRANITE.

To the Editor of the Daily Southern Ohoss. r SIE, — A letter in your paper of yesterday from Mr. McDonald, of Pukekohe, is so thoroughly 'to the purpose, and contains so much good sense when treating of social matters, that I was not a little startled by a statement towards its conclusion — that the writer had found a "seam" of granite on his estate, and wished for boring tools to try for coal under it. That granite, the basis of all rocks, should have anything underneath, more especially-, the remains of vegetable growth-, would as much shock-"* boy from an American or European school as_ an. abortion that the sun went round the earth, or that a curve was the shortest line between two poiqtl.

The faot it, that what ii called " education" in the British Ules it, or hu been until very lately, a kind of literary routine, whioh ignores all scientific knowledge, and leaves us aa ignorant of the nature of (he earth on which weliv*, or the air in which we exist, as if we were perfectly independent of both. When I was a schoolboy the "good education" vth being taught to make Latin verses at which a Roman ploughboy would have 6miled, or to comprehend the branches of the verb tupto, by having there imprinted with the-twujt of a birch. I hear it is better now. E?en in this new oolony, where we begin afresh, the Education Act enforces the teaching of music, but is silent on even the elements of mechanics ot any branoh o£ natural science ; and tfaia for boys who, for the moat part, will acton be placed face to face with the powers of nature. The result is obvious. Some go boring for petroleum where petroleum to pay cannot exist; others waste their misdirected energies prospecting' for coal or metals, when a little geological knowledge would hare saved muoh disappointment. ftut to return to Pukekone. Mr. McDonald may rest assured that he has neither granite nor coal on his property. The whole hill district, from the basin of the Manukau to the Waikato, is basaltic, and this formation js particularly barren in minerals. There is^no true granite in, the province, except it might be' in the Barrier Island or at Coromandel, What Mr. McDonald probably tikes for granite is a tufaceous seam of laminated sandstone, which caps many of the hills in the basaltic region. It may be seen from the Great South Road overlying tb« hill at the back of Mr. Martin's residence. It crops out at Mrs. George's, Maungatawhiri, and is traceable along the ranges! to Tuakau. As for any coal being found under the basalt, it is extremely improbable ; for, if it e?er existed there, this igneous rock would at its irruption have destroyed it. Mr. McDonald will, I hope, excuse this friendly advice lam about to give : Leave boring, alone. I may add that Hochstetter's geological map of the southern part of this province, which can be had for half a crown, affords a great deal of interesting information.,—l am, sir, yours, &c, July 2i, 1867. N.Z.