1. A measure for measuring coal.
2. † a. A thickness, bed or stratum of coal (obs.). b. pl. (Geol.) The whole of the series of rocks formed by the seams of coal and the intervening strata of clay, sandstone, etc., in a coal-field, constituting the upper division of the carboniferous formation. Also attrib. [Referring evidently to the long-established practice of naming the different seams of a coal-field by their measure or thickness: cf. quot. 1665.]
[1665. D. Dudley, Metallum Martis (1854), 28. The names, and partly the nature of every measure, or parting of each cole … the three uppermost measures are called the white measures … the next measure, is the shoulder-cole, the toe-cole, the foot-cole, the yard-cole.] Ibid., 39. The manner of the cole-veins or measures in these parts.
1832. De la Beche, Geol. Man., 321. The vegetables … discovered in the coal measures.
1863. A. C. Ramsay, Phys. Geog., 39. Beds of coal are numerous (whence the name Coal-measures, originally derived from the miners).
1867. W. W. Smyth, Coal & Coal-mining, 35. The whole of the coal-measure ferns are extinct.
