SESSION 1892-93. xxxiii 



The followins: lecture was delivered : — 



" Coal : its Xaturc, Ori2,-in, Position, and Extent ; and its Tlanf^e 

 under the South of England." By Professor T. llupcrt Jones, 

 E.R S., F.G.S., Honorary Member of the Society. {Transactions, 

 Vol. VII, p. 89.) 



The lecture was illustrated by a large number of diagrams. 



Ordixakt Meeting, 16th December, 1892, at Watford, 



John Hopkinson, Esq., F.L.S., E.G.S., etc., President, in the 

 Chair. 



The Right Honourable the Earl of Essex, Mr. James Fisk, and 

 Mr. E. T. Wilks were elected Members of the Society. 



Mrs. Kcmber, The Hansteads, Bricket Wood, St. Albans, was 

 proposed for membership. 



The following paper was read : — 



" Ice and its Work." By John Morison, M.D., F.G.S. 

 {Transactions, Vol. VII, p. 147.) 



The President remarked how comparatively recent it was that 

 we had any knowledge whatever of the action of ice in this 

 country. Only about half a century ago, in November, 1840, 

 evidences of such action were first brought before the Geological 

 Society, by Agassiz, Buckland, and Lyell ; and in 1842 Darwin 

 first described the effects of glaciation in North Wales. Much 

 more recently Professor Ramsay first showed how glaciers can 

 excavate lake-basins. For long it had been a puzzle how it was 

 possible for a lake basin to be scooped out of the solid rock, and it 

 could only be accounted for by the action of ice, the great weight 

 of ice accumulating in the steeper part of a valley pressing the ice 

 downwards with such force in the shallower part below, that the 

 stones embedded in it scooped out a deep hollow which gradually 

 became shallower as the pressure was relaxed, giving the form of 

 lake-basin which Dr. Morison had described.* He also mentioned 

 that Professor Prestwich, about 35 years ago, in a paper in the 

 ' Geologist,' first noticed the occurrence of boulder-clay in Bricket 

 Wood, and found evidences in the gravel beneath it of the former 

 existence of the mammoth in the county. 



Dr. Brett said that he had observed three terraces in the valley 

 of the Colne, and he thought that a large glacier or a succession of 

 glaciers might have filled this valley. 



Dr. Morison said that he did not think that the valley of the 

 Colne was ever occupied by a glacier. No doubt the great ice- 

 sheet did cover the country here, but there was no evidence that 

 any separate glacier ever existed in this valley. Much, he added, 

 remained to be done in this county in recording boulders and 

 the nature of the rocky fragments which occur in the boulder-clay 

 and drifts. 



* The competency of ice, or ice-embedded stones, to scoop out a lake-basin, 

 has recently been called in question. 



