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The Council were desirous of having this subject of the 

 weather of the present winter brought before you at our last 

 meeting, by our former member James Glaisher, Esq., F.R.S., 

 but illness prevented his acceding to their request, and I have 

 therefore thought it desirable very brieiiy to note these facts. 



The possibility of finding workable Coal-fields under the 

 London area, has again engaged the attention of Geologists. The 

 question was mooted as long ago as 1826, when Dr. Buckland 

 and Mr. Conybeare pointed out how closely the Coal measures of 

 the Bristol and Somerset District on the west resembled that of 

 the Great Belgian Coal-field on the east. In 1841, MM, de 

 Beaumont and Duii'^noy called attention to the fact that Coal 

 existed under newer beds in the north of France, and that 

 possibly the same ridge of old rocks with Coal-strata would be 

 found to stretch riglit away under the south-eastern counties of 

 England. 



Attention was again called to the subject by Sir Henry de 

 la Beche, in 1846, and M. Mengy, in 1852, and the matter was 

 very fully discussed by Mr. Godwin Austen, in a paper read 

 before the Geological Society, in 1855 ; while in the report of the 

 Coal Commission in 1871, Professor Prestwich brought forward 

 new evidence. Recently, five borings in the London basin, within 

 a radius of 20 miles, have demonstrated the very moderate depths 

 at which the Paleozoic rocks must lie. 



JSTo. 1. — At Kentish Town — 1,300 feet deep, the London 

 Clay passed through was 350 feet thick ; the Reading Beds, 50 

 feet ; Thanet Sands, 15 feet ; Upper Chalk, 250 feet ; Chalk Marl, 

 30 feet; Upper Greensand, 10 feet; Gault, 60 feet; then 190 

 feet of a new Sandy Rock, believed to be the Devonian or old 

 Red Sandstone. 



No. 2. — The only boring south of the Thames was at Cross- 

 ness. Here a new well bore-hole was sunk 1,000 feet deep. It 

 showed no London Clay proper, but alluvial clay and gravel 20 

 feet thick, immediately below the ordnance level, rested upon 

 undressed Reading and Thanet Sands, about 100 feet thick ; then 

 came Chalk, 620 feet ; Upper Greensand, 33 feet ; Gault, 135 

 feet, succeeded by loose red sand having all the appearance of 

 new Red Sandstone, and resembling the Red series found at 

 Kentish Town. 



No. 3. — This Ixtring at Messrs. Meux's Brewery, Tottenham 



