Horace Bolingbroke Woodward

“ He then pointed out that each coal-seam rests on an under-clay with rootlets of Stigmaria, and he expressed his opinion that the under-clay was the old soil in which grew the plants from which the coal was formed. To confirm this observation he visited America in 1841 and examined the coal-fields of Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia, where he found the under-clay almost invariably present beneath the seams of coal. ”

“ He was educated partly in Montreal, and subsequently at the High School and university of Edinburgh, where Robert Jameson did much to excite his interest in geology. He was in a business house in London from 1817 to 1830. In 1831 he settled in Swansea to take charge of a colliery and some copper-smelting works, and here his interest in geology found abundant scope. ”