HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



SUBTERRANEAN MOUNTAIN RANGES IN SOUTH- 

 EASTERN ENGLAND. 



By THE EDITOR. 



UDDENLY, in the 

 middle of Feb- 

 ruary, there was 

 sprung on the 

 scientific and com- 

 mercial world, in 

 the shape of a news- 

 paper paragraph, 

 the announcement 

 of a geological dis- 

 covery which may 

 revolutionise the 

 trade of the south- 

 eastern counties of 

 England. It was 

 announced by Mr. 

 Francis Brady, 

 C.E., the engineer- 

 in -chief of the 

 Sou th-East ern 

 Railway, to Sir 

 Edward Watkin, chairman of the company, that coal 

 had been reached beneath the chalk at Shakespeare 

 Cliff, near Dover, at a depth of 1180 feet. This 

 seam was struck beneath the chalk after passing 

 through twenty additional feet of clays, grits, and 

 blackish shales which undoubtedly represent the Coal 

 measures. So far as the boring has gone, the resem- 

 blance of these beds to those of the Somersetshire 

 coal field is remarkably close. 



This unobtrusive announcement was the crowning 

 point of one of the most wonderful bits of geological 

 logic which has been brought before the public. 

 More than a quarter of a century ago the veteran 

 living geologist, Professor Prestwich, as well as Mr. 

 Godwin-Austen, set forth their reasons before the 

 scientific world for believing that at no great depth 

 beneath London and the south-eastern counties there 

 lay the continuation subterraneously of the chain of 

 hills represented by the Mendips in the West of 

 England, and the Ardennes of Belgium. This 

 No. 304. — April 1S90. 



theoretically buried chain of hills long went by the 

 name among geologists of the " Underground ridge," 

 and it was felt that the rocks composing it must all 

 be those belonging to the Primary period, in the 

 upper part of which occurs the Carboniferous or 

 coal-bearing formation. Not many years after this 

 announcement, which was made before the Geo- 

 logical Society of London, it obtained verification in 

 a very remarkable manner. A deep well had to be 

 bored in Kentish Town, which penetrated the 

 Tertiary and chalk strata, and at a depth of 1300 

 feet actually bored into the tops of these buried 

 mountains. The specimens brought up by the 

 boring tool proved that they were rocks of the 

 Devonian period, which represent the formation 

 lying immediately beneath the coal. Since then 

 other deep well borings, carried out for the sake of 

 getting at the rich supply of pure water which is 

 usually found in the Green sand beneath the chalk, 

 have borne out the conclusion that there is actually 

 underlying the Metropolis, and the country to the 

 south-east of it, as well as to the north-east, an 

 underground extension of Primary rocks ; and the 

 remarkable thing about them is that they run in a 

 continuous but sinuous line tending to connect the 

 Somersetshire coal-fields with those of Northern 

 France and of the Ardennes. Thus at Burforcl, in 

 Oxfordshire, a boring carried on through the Oolitic 

 formation actually struck the Coal measures at the 

 depth of 1 184 feet; at Ware, in Hertfordshire, 

 farther to the east, at the depth of 800 feet, and at 

 Turnford the Silurian rocks were reached at 980 

 feet ; at Loughton, the overlying Devonian rocks 

 resting at a high angle, at 1092 feet. At Kentish 

 Town the upper division of the same formation, rich 

 in fossils, was reached at 11 13 feet. Messrs. Meux T 

 the brewers, carried out a deep well-boring, which 

 touched the same underground ridge at H4Sfeet. 

 At Crossness the same strata were bored into at 

 1 192 feet. 

 This demonstrates, by actual experiment, the 



E 



