4 PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. 



evident the borings had not touched Mr. Godwin Austen's ridge, and 

 that the next trial would have to he made some way further north, 

 where the Wealden-heds are absent and the Oolites very much 

 thinned out ; the JN'etherfield borings proved these to be more than 

 1,700 feet thick. The existence of the ridge in the London basin, 

 where the Silurian and Old Red Sandstone strata were reached 

 at depths varying from 800 to 1,200 feet, and where the Weaiden 

 beds are absent, was confirmed in 1883 and subsequent years, 

 -and the Oolites no thicker than 87 feet. The presence of the lower 

 Palaeozoic rocks in the Thames Valley so near the surface rendered 

 the discovery of coal southward most hopeful. Under the advice of 

 Mr. Boyd Dawkins, who was an original member of the Sub-Wealdeii 

 Exploration Committee, Sir Ed. W. Watkin, on the part of the 

 Channel Tunnel Company, commenced a boring experiment in 

 1886 near Dover ; a shaft was sunk on the west side of 

 Shakespeare Cliff, and at the commencement of the present year the 

 Coal-Measures were reached at a depth only of 1,204 feet, and good 

 coal 20 feet further down. They are covered with 500 feet of the 

 Lower Cretaceous and 660 feet of the Upper Oolites. It is 

 noticeable that Mr. Godwin Austen's views, expressed 35 years ago, 

 that the Wealden and Purbeck Beds terminate abruptly against the 

 Paleozoic riclge and that coal might be successfully looked for, have 

 been verified at Shakespeare Cliff, where the Lower Cretaceous Beds 

 have been found to be in contact with the Portland Beds. It will 

 be well to bear in mind that the Carboniferous series, which is the 

 youngest of the Palaeozoic, and the older underlying Silurian and 

 Devonian rocks, have been encountered in the Thames Valley 

 -borings near London, while the Trias, Permian, Rh&tic, and 

 Lias are entirely absent, accompanied with a rapid thinning out of 

 the Oolitic Beds and the total disappearance of the Weald and 

 Purbeck Beds. 



I will now transfer your thoughts from the earliest stratified 

 rocks to those which preceded the present and Quaternary 

 periods. There are good grounds for supposing that a Pleiocene 

 Bed occurs near Dewlish, on the ridge commanding the eastern side 



