July 25, 1878] 



NATURE 



351 



London, by Prof, rrestwich, F.R.S., V.P.G.S. The well- 

 known boring at Kentish Town in 1856 showed the absence at 

 that point of lower greensand, the gaiilt being immediately suc- 

 ceeded by hard red and variegated sandstones and clays, the age 

 of which was at first doubtful, but which \\ ere finally considered 

 by the author to approach most nearly to the old red sandstone 

 near Frome, and to the Devonian sandstones and marls near 

 Mons, in Belgium. The existence of some doubt as to this 

 identification rendered the boring lately made at Messrs. Meux's 

 brewery particularly interesting, and the method of working 

 adopted by the Diamond-boring Company, by bringing up 

 sharply cut cores from known depths, gave special certainty to 

 the results obtained. The boring passed through 652^ feet of 

 chalk, 28 feet of upper greensand, and 160 feet of gault, at the 

 base of which was a seam 3 or 4 feet thick, of phosphatic 

 nodules and quartzite pebbles. Beneath this was a sandy cal- 

 careous stratum of a light ash-colour, passing into a pale or white 

 limestone, and this into a rock of oolitic aspect. Casts and im- 

 pressions of shells found in this bed showed it to be the lower 

 greensand, whose place it occupied. The boring was carried 

 further in the hope of reaching the loose water-bearing sands of 

 this formation, but the rock became very argillaceous, and, when 

 62 feet of it had been passed through, the boring entered into 

 mottled red, purple, and greenish shales, dipping at 35° in an 

 unascertained direction. These beds continued through a depth 

 of 80 feet, when, their nature being clearly ascertained, the 

 boring was stopped. The fossils of these coloured beds, which 

 included Spiriftra disjuncta, Rhynchonella cuboides, and species 

 of Edmondia, Chonetes, and Orthis, show them to be of Devonian 

 age. Thus, the existence of palaeozoic rocks at an accessible 

 depth under London and the absence of the Jurassic series, as 

 maintained long since by Mr. Godwin- Austen, is experimentally 

 demonstrated. These facts are of interest in connection with 

 the question of the possible extension of the coal-measures 

 under the cretaceous and tertiary strata of the south-east 

 of England. The beds found at the bottom of Messrs. Meux's 

 boring are of the same character as the Devonian strata 

 which everywhere accompany the coal-measures in Belgiimi and 

 the north of France, being brought into juxtaposition with them 

 by great faults and flexures. The author refers especially to a 

 remarkable section at Auchy au-Bois, in the western extremity 

 of the Valenciennes coal-field, which is particularly interesting 

 from its furnishing evidence that the Hardinghen coal-field, 

 between Calais and Boulogne, is a prolongation of that of 

 Valenciennes, and because the same strike and a prolongation 

 of the same great fault observed at Auchy- au-Bois through 

 Hardinghen would carry the southern boundary of any coal-field 

 in the south-east of England just south of Maidstone, thence 

 passing a little north of London, Hence it is in the district 

 north of London that there is most probability of the discovery 

 of the carboniferous strata. The extent of country in which 

 shafts could be sunk to the palaeozoic strata will, however, be 

 limited by the presence of the water-bearing lower greensand, 

 which probably reaches close to London in the south, reappears 

 in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, thirty or forty miles 

 north of London, and probably extends some distance towards 

 the city under the chalk hills of those counties and Hertford- 

 shire. The nature of the representative of the lower greensand 

 in the boring, and the characters of the fossils contained in it, 

 lead the author to the conclusion that in it we have a deposit 

 produced near the shore of the neocomian sea, here probably 

 consisting of cliffs of Devonian (or carboniferous) rock. From 

 these cliffs the calcareous material which here replaces the usual 

 loose sands of the lower greensand was perhaps derived by the 

 agency of springs ; and the shore-line itself must be situated 

 between the south end of Tottenham Court Road and the 

 Kentish Town boring. The sandy beds of the lower greensand 

 will probably be found to set in at no great distance to the 

 southward, presenting the conditions necessary for storing and 

 transmitting underground waters. A test boring made by Mr. 

 H. Bingham Mildmay at Shoreham Place, about five miles from 

 Sevenoaks, and in which the lower greensand was met with at 

 about the estimated depth (450 feet) and furnished a supply of 

 water, seems to confirm these views. — Notes on the paleon- 

 tology and some of the physical conditions of the Meux's-well 

 deposits, by Charles Moore, F.G.S. The chief interest of Mr. 

 Moore's investigations centres in the sixty-seven feet of strata 

 intervening between the gault and Devonian. In this marly 

 and oolitic-looking deposit he found no less than eighty-five 

 different kinds of organisms, exhibiting a singular admixture of 



marine and lacustrine forms of life. Foraminifera are rare, but 

 entomostraca and polyzoa are very abundant. Some genera 

 are found, such as Carpenteria, Saccammina, Thecidium, and 

 Zellania, of which the range in time is greatly extended by these 

 investigations. The author fully confirms Mr. Etheridge's re- 

 ference of the beds in question to the neocomian period, widely 

 as they differ in physical characters from the lower greensand 

 strata of the south-east of England. From a careful study of 

 the nature and condition of preservation of the minute organisms, 

 he concludes that the deposits which contain them were formed 

 at first in shallow lacustrine hollows on the surface of the Devo- 

 nian rocks now lying buried at a depth of 1,000 feet below 

 London, and that these lakes were invaded by the waters of the 

 neocomian sea, with the deposits of which their sediments were 

 in part mingled, and under which they were finally buried. — 

 The chair was then taken by Prof. Prestwich, M.A., F.R.S., 

 vice-president. — On Pelanechinus, a new genus of sea-urchin 

 from the coral rag, by W. Keeping, F.G.S. , Professor of Geo- 

 logy in the University College of Wales. — Remarks on Sauro- 

 cephalus, and on the species which have been referred to that 

 genus, by E. Tulley Newton, F.G.S., of H.M. Geological Sur- 

 vey. — A microscopical study of some Huronian clay-slates, by 

 Dr. Arthur Wichmann. — On a section through Glazebrook Moss, 

 Lancashire, by T. Mellard Reade, F.G.S. — On the tertiary de- 

 posits on the Solimoes and Javary Rivers in Brazil, by C. B, 

 Brown. With an appendix by R. Etheridge, F.R.S., and 

 communicated by him. — On the physical history of the English 

 lake-district, with notes on the possible subdivision of the Skid- 

 daw slates, by J. Clifton Ward, Assoc. R.S.M., F.G.S.— On 

 some well-defined life -zones in the lower part of the Silurian 

 (Sedg%v.) of the Lake-district, by J. E. Marr. Coomiunicated 

 by Prof. T. M'K. Hughes, F.G.S.— On the upper part of the 

 Bala beds and base of Silurian in North Wales, by F. Ruddy. 

 Communicated by Prof. T. M'K. Hughes, F.G.S. 



Anthropological Institute, June II. — Mr. John Evans, 

 D.C.L., F.R.S., president, in the chair.— Dr. J. Beddoe, F.R.S., 

 read a paper on the Bulgarians, referring more especially to the 

 skull-form, on which he quoted Virchow and Kopernicki, but 

 gave also some observations of his own. Not one of sixteen 

 skulls hitherto examined, and procured in different districts of 

 Bulgaria, presented anything like the true Slavonic type, though 

 a few slightly approximated towards it. Almost all were of a 

 cylindrical form, with a considerable parieto-occipital develop- 

 ment, and a low, narrow, sloping frontal region ; there was an 

 absence of frontal parietal bosses ; the skulls inclined to be long, 

 except those few which indicated an admixture of the Slavic 

 type. The majority nowise reminded one of either the Slavic 

 or Tmrkic form, nor were they much like Esthonian skulls, but 

 they were probably rather Ugrian than anything else. In some of 

 them the great degree of prognathism, the deep nasal notch and 

 horizontal nasal bones reminded Virchow of the Australian type. 

 If the physique of the Bulgarians was a difficult and obscure 

 subject, their morale presented its own difficulties. They dif- 

 fered from the Serbs in some points favourably ; in more, 

 perhaps, unfavourably, though some of their worst faults were 

 doubtless what naturally arose in a subject race. The heroic type 

 which appeared among the Serbs, whether they were Mussul- 

 man, Rayah, or free Christian, and culminated in the splendid 

 barbarians of the Montenegro, was absent here. There was no 

 chivalry, but mere ferocity, in their ballads. Their religion was 

 little above Fetishism, and had little connection with morality. 

 Manliness, generosity, truthfulness, and respect for women were 

 scarcely to be expected of such a people ; but ambition was there, 

 and industry and acquisitiveness to a degree not found among the 

 Serbs ; and the desire of knowledge was there, and the capacity 

 to learn, and, but for the interference of Russia; and the vast 

 amount of moral and physical evil brought about thereby, they 

 might gradually, under a government which, though faulty, was 

 improving, have developed into better things. — Miss A. W. 

 Buckland read a paper on the stimulants of the ancients and of 

 modern savages. The paper commenced by stating that all 

 races have acquired the use of stimulants in some form, but that 

 the stimulants of the lower races, such as the Australian, con- 

 sists merely of leaves and roots, chewed for their strengthening 

 and invigorating properties, this being only a slight advance 

 upon the instinct which prompts the inferior animals to seek out 

 certain plants for medicinal purposes. The first step towards 

 the manufacture of stimulating drinks is seen in the kava of the 

 South Seas. This .irt of producing fermentation by the masti- 



