

November 7, 1895] 



NATURE 



Royal College of Science, South Kensington, are contributed by 

 Prof. G. B. Howes to the October number of the College's 

 Magazine, and are accompanied by an excellent portrait of 

 Huxley. This article throws some interesting side-lights upon 

 Huxley's great personality, especially with reference to his 

 bearing towards his students and subordinates. 



A passing allusion will suffice for the remaining articles of 

 scientific interest in the magazines that have reached us. Long- 

 man's contains a popular description of the making of kelp, by 

 Mr. D. J. Robertson, and also a paper on the disappearance of 

 1,'ulls from " Pallinsburn Gull Pond," by Mr. P. Anderson 

 Graham. In Good IVords Sir Robert Ball writes on " Halley," 

 Sir Herbert Maxwell, Bart., pleads for the preservation of the 

 " Fowls of the Air," and the Marquis of Ormonde describes a 

 short cruise to Norway and Spitzbergen. The Sunday Magazine 

 contains the concluding paper by " Eha," on " Voices of the 

 Indian Night." Chambers' s Journal has, among the subjects of 

 its popular articles : " The Coal of the World," " Migrations of 

 I'ish,' "Some Modern Uses of Glass," and "A Bundle of 

 Paradoxes." The Strand Magazine has a number of graphical 

 representations of statistics referring to the coinage productions 

 of the Royal Mint, by Mr. J. Holt Schooling. The National 

 contains a brief appreciative note on Pasteur's work. In addi- 

 tion to the magazines mentioned, we have received the Quarterly 

 Review, Century Magazine, Humanitarian (in which occurs a 

 paper by Prof. W. F. Barrett, on "Dynamic Thought"), and 

 the English Illustrated Magazine. 



THE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF THE UNITED 

 KINGDOM} 



Summary of the chief Scientific Results obtained 

 DURING the Year 1894. 



I. England and Wales. 

 'T'HE survey of the Lower Silurian rocks of the Isle of Man 

 has been continued by Mr. G. W. Lamplugh, who finds 

 that the Skiddaw slates of this island, although they possess 

 much lithological variation, are essentially the same mass 

 throughout and are hardly likely to disclose any base to the 

 series. Nor has it been possible to trace any sub-divisions, 

 equivalent to those in the Lower Silurian rocks elsewhere, 

 owing to the absence of fossils. 



Reference was made in the previous Report (1893) ^o certain 

 conglomerates or breccias which it was suggested may have been 

 produced by the breaking up of sandy slates and grits under 

 intense shear strain. These remarkable rocks have been found 

 during the past year to attain an importance altogether un- 

 suspected. Mr. Lamplugh has traced them in definite bands 

 following the prevailing strike of the Skiddaw slates, and 

 generally intercalated between an argillaceous and a more or 

 less arenaceous group of strata. He has found one band to run 

 continuously for eight miles, and thereafter, somewhat less 

 clearly, for four miles further. 



In the area of South Wales considerable tracts of Old Red 

 Sandstone have been mapped during the past year by Mr. J. R. 

 Dakyns and Mr. A. Strahan ; and so far the following local sub- 

 divisions have been recognised : — 



(3) Grey quartz-grits and conglomerates with some red sand- 

 stones. This group forms the uppermost of the whole 

 series. 

 (2) Massive red sandstones with some conglomerates and a 

 few red shales, as well as occasional grey sandstones and 

 thin limestones (cornstones). 

 (i) Red and variegated marls with bands of soft red sand- 

 stone and thin limestones (cornstones). 

 These three sub-divisions pass into each other. 

 In Devonshire and Cornwall the re-survey of the Devonian 

 formation and associated igneous rocks has been continued by 

 Mr. Ussher, who has recognised that Upper Devonian strata are 

 largely developed in the southern parts of these counties. Thus 

 they are found skirting the Dartmoor granite, from Kingsbridge 

 l\i)ad to Shaugh Prior, not far from Plymouth. In the Plymouth 

 ilistrict, they consist of slates with local volcanic materials and 

 a mass of porphyritic diabase at Ford, near Devon port. As they 

 range into Cornwall, they present some specially interesting 



1 Extracted from " Annual Report of the Geological Survey by Sir 

 Archibald Geikie, D.Sc, LL.D., F.R.S., Director General," published in 

 ilie Report of the Science and Art Department for the year 1894. 



NO. 1358, VOL. 53] 



features. Besides retaining their evidence of contemporaneous 

 volcanic action, they have yielded fossils which prove their 

 stratigraphical position and allow of their being correlated with 

 the Upper Devonian group of other regions. 



The progress of mining, since first the maps of the coal-fields 

 were published, has been so great that many of these maps have 

 become more or less obsolete. It is therefore highly desirable, 

 from an industrial and national point of view, that the surveys of 

 our mineral fields should be revised, in order to place within 

 reach of the mining community, and of the public generally, an 

 accurate representation of the various coal-fields on which so 

 much of the material prosperity of the country depends. 



The re-survey of the great coal-field of South Wales has now 

 been in progress for three years, and during the past year that of 

 the North Staffordshire and Leicestershire fields has been begun. 

 During last summer certain improvements were made in the 

 mapping of the Whitehaven district, particularly in regard to the 

 boundaries between the formations and the positions of the 

 faults. One of the most interesting points in this re-examina- 

 tion, made by Mr. A. Strahan, was the proof obtained of the 

 existence of two distinct systems of faults, the one older than the 

 Permian period and running from south-west to north-east, the 

 other later than that period and trending from south-east to 

 north-west. This fact had been previously insisted upon by Mr. 

 J. D. Kendall, to whom the Survey is greatly indebted for his 

 generous courtesy in supplying all the information which he had 

 amassed during a residence of many years in the district as a 

 mining engineer. 



The chief work of the past year among the Cretaceous forma- 

 tions has been the tracing, by Mr. Jukes-Browne, of the various 

 sub-divisions of the Chalk over tracts of the southern counties 

 where they had not been previously mapped. Apart from its 

 scientific interest this re-survey of the Chalk is of great economic 

 importance. The maps will henceforth show at a glance the 

 distribution of the various members of the Chalk, and thus will 

 furnish accurate information for the guidance of those who have 

 to sink wells or deal with the water-supply and drainage of the 

 wide chalk-districts of the south of England. 



Mr. Whitakerand Mr. Reid have continued the revision of the 

 Tertiary strata in the Hampshire Basin. 



During the past year the survey of the Superficial Deposits for 

 the construction of an agronomic map of the country has made 

 good progress in the midland and southern counties, and much 

 new information has been obtained with regard to the extent of 

 the drifts in Monmouthshire and South Wales. 



In the valleys that intersect the South Wales coal-field, and 

 chiefly end in the broad dip-slopes of the northern outcrop of 

 Millstone Grit, much boulder-clay as well as gravel has been 

 noticed by Mr. Gibson. It is almost entirely of local origin. 

 That these uplands were overspread with ice is shown by the 

 occurrence of glacial stride on the Millstone Grit at a height of 

 about 1500 feet above the sea. Further proof that the ice must 

 have existed in considerable mass has been obtained in the 

 excavations of some new waterworks at Nant-y-bwch, where a 

 hill of sandstone upwards of 200 yards in length has been found 

 to be a transported mass. Though its bedding is only slightly 

 disturbed, yet the whole mass has been ascertained to lie upon 

 boulder-clay, and must therefore be regarded as a huge boulder. 

 In the Isle of Man, Mr. Lamplugh has observed that the 

 marked distinction referred to in the previous Report, between the 

 insular drift of the hills and the extra-insular drift of the low 

 ground still continues. The relative distribution of these drifts 

 seems to prove that both are of truly glacial origin. Most of 

 the deeper glens in the Isle of Man were probably filled with 

 local glaciers before the coming of the great south-flowing ice- 

 sheet which afterwards overrode the island up to its highest 

 summits. As shown by numerous stria; observed on the 

 Skiddaw slates, the general march of the ice during the height 

 of the glaciation seems to have been from some point west of 

 north, instead of east of north, as usually stated. A bed of fine 

 warp or silt in the glacial series of Kirk Michael may prove 

 to be of some economic value. It has been locally used in 

 past time as a fuller's earth, and an effort is now about 

 to be made to introduce it to a wider market for the same 

 purpose. 



II. Scotland. 



As announced in the previous Report, all the tracts of Lewisian 

 gneiss on the mainland, from Cape Wrath to the Kyles of Skye, 

 have been mapped, but there are many displaced tracts or slices 

 of that formation which lie to the east of the great line of com- 



