The district known as Cannock Chase is, at the present moment, the scene of a series of extensive mining operations which, if even moderately successful, will open up a very considerable area of valuable coal-seams, computed at not less than 200,000,000 tons, and push outwards a distance of upwards of five miles the northern apex of the South Staffordshire Coal-field. This apex, as is well known, now rests on Brereton, where the Coal-measures are thrown down on the east by a fault of considerable range and influence, and on the west they are overlapped unconformably by Bunter conglomerates. From this point the conglomerates are continued in a broad unbroken tract, over the Chase to within about four miles of the town of Stafford, up to which point the mining investigations, to which I have alluded, will be extended.