220 



NATURE 



IJuly 23, 1874 



leaves only a good teacher to be desired, and itself helps 

 to form and train him. The corifirming of this Regulation 

 will be a great step towards that much-to-be-desired state 

 of things when a laboratory will be considered as neces- 

 sary a part of a school as a class-room, bottles and bones 

 as essential as books and boards. But we must no* 

 ignore what has already been done in schools like Eton 

 and Rugby ; with their laboratories and museums, such 

 a Regulation is supeifluous ; but with the good work which 

 has been accomplished before us, we have a happy omen 

 of the result of the universal application of the principle 

 they have voluntarily adopted. It is from these schools 

 and others not included in the " nine," that have not fitted 

 up their laboratories, that the Natural Science scholars 

 are obtained, and perhaps the proportion of such scholar- 

 ships to all others is as great as that of schools with labo- 

 ratories to those without — probably greater. As the 

 number of science-teaching schools increases the number 

 of scholarships must increase too, but not at the same 

 rate ; the proper and final proportion maybe left to settle 

 itself. 



On the whole we may regard these proposed Regu- 

 lations with the greatest satisfaction, and it is probable 

 that they will be looked back upon as the charter of the 

 country's progress in scientific education. Individual 

 efforts have been made on a grand scale, and natural 

 science is making its way more or less efficiently into all 

 good schools, while some are devoting themselves chiefly 

 to its cultivation, as Taunton, Giggleswick, Burnley ; but 

 universal recognition, its acquirement of prestige, and 

 consequent respect and earnest study, with the national 

 advantages to be derived from it, can only be secured by 

 such Regulations as these, followed or not as may be neces- 

 sary, by similar ones for all the larger endowed schools. 



THE SUB-WEALDEN EXPLORATION 



IF the word romance were to be imported into scientific 

 literature there could surely be no more fitting appli- 

 cation of it than to this recent crusade into the bowels ot 

 the earth among the woods and lanes oi Sussex. Down 

 in that southern part of the country, some hundreds of 



The Sub-Wcalden Exploration in Sussex— Boring at Netheifield. (Kindly lent by the Proprietors of the Crafhk.) 



miles sway frcm the great centres of cur mineral industry, 

 ■with no prospect of any pecuniary reward or of any im- 

 mediate economic advantage, men are found willing to 

 subscribe mcney to the extent of thousands of pounds for 

 the purpose of settlirgdcfinitely seme important questions 

 in the geology of the south-east of England, viz. at what 

 depth frcm the surface the secondary strata are under- 

 lain by a ridge or platform of old Palaeozoic rocks, what 

 are the nature and age of these bottom rocks of the dis- 

 trict, and what is the arrangement of the strata lying be- 

 tween them and the surface. It has long been a problem 

 of much interest to geologists to discover whether or in 

 what manner the great series of Jurassic rocks, which 

 stretches across our island from the coasts of Dorsetshire 

 to those of Yorkshire, passes south-eastward underneath 

 the chalk. That series has been found to grow thinner 

 towards the south-east. On the French side of ihe 

 Channel it reappears in the Boulonnais, coming out from 

 under the Cretaseous strata and resting against a ridge of 



Palaeozoic rocks which rise to the surface between Bou- 

 logne and Calais. Nearly twenty years ago Mr. Godwin 

 Austen drew attention to the probable extension of this 

 ridge underneath the later formations of the south-east of 

 England and its connection with the Carboniferous ttacts 

 in our'south-wcEtern counties. It was a point of great 

 interest in any attempt to reconstruct a map of the phy- 

 sical geography of western Europe during Palsozoic 

 times. Hence, at irten'als since the publication of Mr. 

 Austen's great memoir, renewed attention has been given 

 to the subject, until at last the idea took shape that a bold 

 attempt should be made to settle some portion at least of 

 the problem by putting down a bore and keeping it going, 

 if possible, until all the Secondary rocks should be pierced 

 and definite information should be obtained as to what 

 lies be'ow them. Advantage was taken of the meeting of 

 the British Association at Brighton in 1872 to organise 

 the Echtnic. For so purely scientific a project it was of 

 course natural to look for help mainly to such well-wishers 



