610 
GEOLOGY AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
J\ BANDONING on this occasion the customary procedure of 
opening the proceedings with the presidential address, 
Section C plunged at the first meeting into the midst of its 
work with a long list of papers. The reason for this change 
was that Sir Archibald Geikie’s address might be heard on 
Saturday by. the visiting members of the French Association 
between their reception in the Town Hall and their entertain- 
ment at luncheon in the College Close. The arrangement 
proved highly successful, and the President’s eloquent demand 
that geologists should be allowed to investigate the duration of 
geological time for themselves with data at their command, 
unhampered by the vague speculations in which the physicists 
have indulged, was listened to by a crowded audience, the plat- 
form being occupied by a distinguished group of British and 
foreign men of science. 
As befitted their importance and local interest, the first papers 
taken on Thursday were those relating to Coal-exploration in 
Kent. Mr. R. Etheridge dealt at some length with the rela- 
tions between the Dover and Franco-Belgian Coal-basins, with- 
out, however, adding much new information to what is already 
known. Prof. W. Boyd Dawkins, after once more reviewing 
the history of the discovery, gave some valuable data respecting 
the boring carried on under his supervision at Ropersole, eight 
miles north-west of Dover, where Coal-measures have been 
struck at a depth of 1580 feet, after Chalk, Gault, Lower Green- 
sand, Wealden, Corallian, Oxfordian, Bithonian and Liassic 
strata had been passed through, and respecting other borings at 
Ottinge, Hothfield, Old Soar near Tonbridge and Penshurst, of 
which the first, at a depth of 730 feet, is in Kimeridge Clay ; the 
second, at 800 feet, in Portlandian beds; the third, at over 700 
feet, in Hastings Sands; and the last, at 1867 feet, in Kim- 
eridge Clay. From these data, Prof. Dawkins concludes that the 
southern boundary of the concealed coal-basin ranges under the 
southern scarp of the North Downs for some distance to the 
westward of Dover, along the line marked by the Pembroke- 
Mendip anticline, and that to the south of this anticline the 
Paleozoic floor is probably composed of pre-Coal-Measure 
rocks. 
The discussion elicited by these two papers was scarcely 
worthy of the subject, perhaps from the matter having lost 
its freshness through so much having been written upon it. 
At the same meeting Mr. W. Gibson, of H.M. Geological 
Survey, contributed a short account of the results of his investi- 
gations among the Upper Carboniferous rocks of North Stafford- 
shire, which have an important bearing upon the question of the 
coal-fields lying concealed beneath the Red Rocks of the Midland 
counties. Mr. Gibson showed that considerable areas of so- 
called Permian rocks in the region which he has examined are 
conformable to the Upper Carboniferous strata and cannot be 
separated from them. By working out the details of these 
strata he has been able to detect true Upper Coal-Measures 
farther westward than has hitherto been done, and has found 
evidence that on the north-west side of the North Staffordshire 
anticline the valuable coal-measures and ironstones do not un- 
interruptedly descend beneath the so-called Permian, but rise 
locally westward and are nearer the surface than might have 
been expected. 
Another paper of stratigraphical interest was that of Mr. A. J. 
Jukes-Browne on a recent boring through the Chalk and Gault 
near Dieppe, which shows that the Folkestone and Wissant 
facies of the Gault extend southward as far as Dieppe, a distance 
of about fifty-two miles, 
Owing to the lantern being available on two days only during 
the meeting, viz. on Friday and Monday, it became necessary 
to take all papers requiring this method of illustration on these 
days, and the usual grouping of the contributions according to 
subject was, in consequence, only partially possible. At Friday's 
session Dr. A. W. Rowe gave an account of the methods by 
which he has attained such magnificent results in the photo- 
micrography of opaque objects, illustrating his address by a 
representative series of views to demonstrate the value of this 
mode of research in the study of the minute structure of fossils. 
Dr. G. Abbott then discussed the formation of concretions ; and 
Dr. H. J. Johnston-Lavis dealt with that thorny question the 
origin of oolitic structure, renewing the debate begun last year 
at Bristol and strongly combating Mr. Wethered’s view that the 
structure was originally organic. Unfortunately, Mr. Wethered 
Was not present to sustain his case, but there was nevertheless 
NO. 1564, VOL. 60] 
NALORE 
[OcroBER 19, 1899 
an instructive discussion. Prof. W. J. Sollas in a short note on 
a cognate subject, the origin of flint, stated that he had recently 
found the hollow casts of sponge-spicules in abundance in the 
chalk in the vicinity of bands of flint both in Oxfordshire and 
on the Kentish coast, thus sustaining the view that the silica of 
the nodules was derived from this source. 
Mr. E. Greenly described at this session some remarkable 
funnel-shaped pipes of hard sandstone in the Carboniferous 
Limestone of Dwlbau Point, East Anglesey, due to contem- 
poraneous erosion of an exceptional kind ; and he also gave an 
account of the glacial phenomena of the same locality. Prof. 
P. F. Kendall had an excellent paper on extra-morainic drainage 
in Yorkshire, in which he claimed that numerous abnormal 
valleys in the Eastern Moorlands and in the hills west of the 
Vale of York must have been excavated by the drainage of 
lakes formed at the margin of the ice-sheet during the glacial 
period ; and Mr. J. Lomas put forward some. new ideas respect- 
ing the formation of lateral moraines and rock-trains in glaciers. 
On Saturday, as already mentioned, the president delivered his 
address, which constituted the only business of the Section. 
On Monday a long list of papers was taken, including several 
with lantern illustration. Prof. Sollas discussed Homotaxy and 
Contemporaneity, showing that Huxley’s well-known contention 
could not be sustained and had led to much misunderstanding 
of the value of fossil evidence. Prof. W. W. Watts briefly 
described a smoothed and grooved surface of Mount Sorrel 
Granite underlying undisturbed Keuper Marl, and his paper led 
to one of the best discussions of the meeting as to the climatal 
conditions of Triassic times, most of the speakers agreeing that 
the surface in question had probably been worn by wind-driven 
sand, and that it afforded further evidence of desert conditions 
during the period. Another short paper of high importance was 
that of Prof. A. Renard on the origin of Chondritic Meteorites, 
in which it was shown that the rock-structure of certain of these 
extra-terrestrial fragments presented the familiar phenomena of 
dynamo-metamorphism. As the president remarked in the 
discussion, it is not often that the geologist can apply the 
principles of his science beyond the sphere he inhabits. 
The local effects of coast-erosion were next described and 
well illustrated by Captain McDakin and Mr. G. Dowker, after 
which Mr. W. Whitaker presented the first fruits of the efforts 
recently made by the Council of the Association to obtain from 
the coastguards all round our shores, with the sanction of the 
Lords of the Admiralty, schedules of information as to the 
changes due to the action of the sea. 
Mr. Vaughan Cornish then exhibited a series of photographs 
of Wave-phenomena, and discussed the relations between wave- 
forms in different substances, a discussion which was renewed 
at a later session. * The eruption of Vesuvius in 1898 was 
described and illustrated by Dr. Tempest Anderson ; while Prof. 
G. Platania contributed an account of the recent volcanic 
phenomena of Mount Etna; and an excellent day’s work was 
concluded by a report by Prof. P. F. Kendall on the results 
obtained by a local committee, by the use of chemical reagents, 
as to the flow of underground waters in the limestone district 
of Craven in Yorkshire at the sources of the Aire. A committee 
of the Association was formed to continue these researches, and 
a grant of 50/. was obtained in aid of the expenses. 
The first paper taken on Tuesday was that of Prof. W. Boyd 
Dawkins on the geology of the Channel Tunnel, in which, after 
indicating the conditions under which the proposed tunnel 
would have been made, it was stated that in the portion 2300 
yards long already excavated on the English side, the Lower 
Grey Chalk was soft enough to be easily cut by machine and 
hard enough to stand without lining, and that five years’ 
exposure had not sensibly affected its cut surface. It was 
generally conceded by the speakers in the subsequent discussion 
that the geological conditions were peculiarly favourable for the 
construction of the tunnel, and that, apart from the political 
question, no insuperable difficulty was likely to be encountered. 
Mr. F. W. Harmer then read a carefully prepared paper on 
a proposed new classification of the Pliocene deposits of the east 
of England, in which he suggested the terms Lenhaman for the 
Lenham Beds, Gedgrvavian for the Coralline Crag, Wadtontan, 
Newhournian and Butleyan for different portions of the Red 
Crag, Zcentan for the Norwich Crag, and Cfzllesfordean and 
Weybournian respectively for the Chillesford and Weybourne 
deposits. The author considers the Red Crag to have accumu- 
lated in shallow inlets which were silted up one after another 
during a slow upheaval of the southern part of the area. Ina 
