104 



NATURE 



[October 2, 19 19 



suffer a heavy pecuniary handicap — the cost of rail- 

 way fares. This affects both tlie staff and students of 

 coheges, as well as local workers who are extending 

 their radius of work — an inevitable necessity in the 

 investigation of many problems. It also seriously 

 interferes with the activity of local natural history 

 societies and field clubs, the geological societies and 

 associations of the great provincial towns, and, above 

 all, that focus of amateur geological activity — the 

 Geologists' Association of l,ondon. It is difficult to 

 exaggerate the importance of these agencies in the 

 promotion of geological education. Both professional 

 and amateur geologists are deeply indebted to the 

 excursions which are in most cases directed by 

 specialU' qualified workers, with whom it is a labour 

 of love. At the same time one of their most valu- 

 able results is the creation of interest in scientific 

 work in the localities that are visited. Now that the 

 railwavs are, if report speaks truly, to be nationalised, 

 or at an}' rate controlled by the State, the claims of 

 scientific work, carried out without reward in the 

 national interest, to special consideration will surely 

 not be ignored. .Ml questions as to the persons to 

 whom such travelling facilities should be extended 

 and the conditions that should be imposed may safely 

 be left to the decision of the Geological Survey, which 

 has always had the most friendly and sympathetic 

 relations with private workers and afforded them 

 everv facility and assistance which their compara- 

 tively limited staff and heavy duties permitted. 



There is at the present time a very urgent need 

 for the provision of further facilities for the analysis 

 of rocks and minerals to assist and complete the 

 researches both of the official surveyors and of private 

 persons engaged in research. The work is of a very 

 special character, and the number of those who have 

 given sufficient attention to it and understand its 

 difficulties and pitfalls is very liinited. 



The analvtical work of the Survey is organised on 

 a verv modest scale in comparison with the personnel 

 and equipment of the laboratory of the United States 

 Geological .Survey, though the quality of the work 

 has been, as a rule, in recent years quite as high. 

 There are two analytical chemists attached to the 

 Geological Survey, and some of the other members 

 of th<' staff nre capable of doing good analytical work. 

 The demand, however, for analyses for economic pur- 

 po.ses is so great that it is impossible to carry out 

 .ill the analvses that would be desirable in connection 

 with the purelv scientific work of the Survev itself. 

 There is, consequently, no possibility of their being 

 able to assist private investitjators. 



In the absence of facilities for obtaining rock 

 analvses, petrological work in this country is at 

 present seriously handicapped. .\ striking illustration 

 of the inadequate provision for analyses is revealed 

 in the fact that for the whole of the early Permian 

 granitic intrusions in the south-west of England, 

 covering nearly two thousand square miles, and in- 

 cluding numerous different tvpes and varieties, there 

 are onlv four analvses in existence, and of these two 

 are out of date and imperfect. This is all the more 

 remarkable in view of the fact that these rocks are 

 closelv connected with the pneumatolytic action that 

 has given us almost all the economic minerals of the 

 south-west of England. 



.\nother direction in which the worlc of the .Survey 

 could with advantage be extended is in the execution 

 of deep borings' on rarefullv thought out schemes bv 

 which a maximum of information could be obtained. 

 Both in Holland pnd Germany borings have been 



3 1 h-^vf^n.!* <:p!i^« tn i^e->] here with th- shallow brtrings in soft strat.i 

 which h.nvc heeTi to cirr'-ssfully cnnHnct'H oti the Flanders front during the 

 war by Capt. W. n. R. King, of the Geological Survey. 



XO. 2605. VOL. 104] 



carried out to discover the nature of the older rocks 

 beneath the Secondary and Tertiary strata, and Prof. 

 Watts in his presidential address to the Geological 

 .Society in 1912, dwelt on the importance of ex- 

 ploring systematically the region beneath the wide 

 spread of the younger rocks that covers such a great 

 extent of the east and south of England. Prof. 

 Boulton, my predecessor in this chair, has endorsed 

 this appeal, but nothing has been done or is ap- 

 parently likely to be done in this direction. It seems 

 extraordinary that no co-ordinated effort should have 

 l>een made to ascertain tiie character and potentiality 

 of this almost unknown land that lies close beneath 

 our feet and is the continuation of the older rocks 

 of the west and north to which we owe so much of 

 our mineral wealth. It is true that borings have tx-en 

 put down by private enterprise, but, being directed 

 only by the hope of private gain and by rival interests, 

 ihev have been carried out on no settled plan, and 

 the results, and sometimes the very existence, of the 

 borings have been kept secret. The natural con- 

 .sequences of this procedure have been the maximum 

 of expense and the minimum of useful information. 



I'nfortunately. in recent years percussion or rope- 

 boring, which breaks up the rock into fine powder, 

 has more and more, on account of its cheapness, re- 

 placed the use of a circular rotating drill, which yields 

 a substantial cylindrical core that affords far more 

 information as to the nature of the rocks and the 

 geolo£jical structure of the district. If private boring 

 is still to be c.-irried on. the adoption of the latter pro- 

 cedure should be insisted on, even if the difference 

 of cost has to be defrayed by the Government. It is 

 quite true that a considerable amount of useful in- 

 formation can be collected by means of a careful 

 microscopic examination of the minute fragments 

 which alone are available for study, so that the 

 nature of the rocks traversed can be recognised : but 

 the texture of the rock is destroyed, as well as any 

 evidence which might have been available of its larger 

 structures and stratigraphical relations, and almost all 

 traces of fossils. It is, too. imnossible to tell with 

 certaintv the exact depth at which any particular 

 material was originally located, for fragments broken 

 off from the sides of the bore may easily find their 

 wav to the bottom. 



.■\ good illustration, and one of many that might be 

 cited, of the misdirected energv that is sometimes 

 expended in prospecting operations was afforded a 

 few vears ago bv a company that put down a boring 

 for oil through more than a thousand feet of granite 

 without being aware of the nature of the rock that 

 was being traversed. In this case a percussion drill 

 was employed, but a few minutes' e.Kamination of 

 the material should have enabled the engineer in 

 charge, supposing he had even an elementary know- 

 ledge of geologv, to save hundreds of oounds of need- 

 less expenditure. The sum total of the funds which 

 have been uselessly expended in this country alone 

 in hopeless exploraiions for minerals, in complete dis- 

 regard of the most obvious geological evidence, would 

 have been sufficient to defray many times over the 

 cost of a complete scientific underground survey. 



If research ir to be carried out economically and 

 effectively, it must be organised systematically and 

 directed primarily with the aim of advancing know- 

 ledge. If this aim be well and faithfully kept in 

 view, -.-naterial benefits will accrue which would never 

 have been thoucht to be sufficiently probable to war- 

 rant the expenditure of money on prospecting. 



It .is, however, not only in the areas occupied by 

 Secondary or Tertiary rocks that systematic boring 

 is urgently needed. There are many other localities 

 where important information as to the structure of 



