New Colliery – Fossilized Palm Tree

October 1890

Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 24 October 1890

There is something in connection with the new colliery at Denaby that strikes me as significant.

I see no diminution in the incessant out-put of water from the shaft which is being sunk into the earth. Yet the villagers can scarcely get enough Aqua for domestic use, and many of them can be seen wandering to and from the canal some distance away, with buckets —not to drink, I hope.

One cannot be surprised at the men drinking beer instead of coffee and tea, when the pure streams have become drained.

Has the colliery company tapped all the local springs, and turned the water into the sewagy river and canal? Some folks think so.

I have seen this week a fine specimen of a fossilized palm tree. It came from under terra firma at a depth of 250 feet, and the spot where it was found was in the shaft of the proposed new colliery at Coni4sorough. It was a geologist who showed it me, and he naturally bad a good deal to say about it.

Said he “ one time of day of course this tree was green and growing under the blue canopy of heaven. The climate about here could not have been the same then as it is in the 19th century. There must have been an almost tropical sun above it.

Consequently this earth could not have always had the same revolution round the sun. Furthermore, what is now the North and South Poles were not always have been ice, for discoveries been made which show that these parts must have possessed considerable solar heat.