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SECTION C— GEOLOGY. 

 President of tke Section — Henet Woodward, LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1. 

 The Peesidext delivered the folio wdng Address : — 



SrscE I received the friendly intimation from Professor Bonney, your distinguished 

 and able President of last year, that the Council of this Association had done me 

 the honour to select me to occupy the presidential chair of this Section which he 

 had vacated, I have been greatly exercised as to what subject to choose for the 

 brief address with which it has now become customary to open the Session. Not 

 that there is any lack of materials ready to hand for the purpose — on the contrary, 

 the subjects embraced by geology are uow so varied and extensive that the effort 

 to focus them in a single mind is ever becoming a more difficult task to accomplish, 

 and demands the literary skill of a Lyell or a Geikie to marshal and arrange them 

 from year to year in a manner suitable for presentation to you at our annual 

 gathering. 



Foremost in interest must necessarily be that which relates to our Home 

 Affairs, and in this I have been most kindly favoured by Dr. A. Geikie, the 

 Director-General of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, who sends me a brief 

 notice of the progress of the Survey for 1886, taken partly from his Annual Report 

 as Director-General and partly from information supplied by the office through the 

 kindness of Mr. William Topley, our Recording Secretary. The following is the 

 statement which I have received : — 



The survey of the soUd geology of England and Wales was completed at the 

 end of 1883, and the field-staff has since been occupied in surveying the drift- 

 deposits, making at the same time such revisions of the ordinary (solid) geology as 

 may be necessary. In the north and east of England the drift and solid have been 

 surveyed at the same time. The areas examined in the earlier days of the survey, 

 in the south, centre, and west of England, and in Wales, were done for the solid 

 rocks only. 



In order to meet the great need for a general map of England and Wales on a 

 moderate scale, one is being engraved by the Survey ou the scale of 4 miles to 1 inch 

 (] : 2o3440), and will be issued in fifteen sheets. 



A few of the survey memoirs relate to large areas, and give complete descrip- 

 tions of the formations therein exposed, but most of the memoirs are explanations 

 of special sheets of the map. A series of monographs is now in preparation o-ivino- 

 full desraiptions of special formations. Mr. AVhitaker has charge of that on the 

 Lower Tertiaries ; Mr. H. B. Woodward and ^Ir. C Fox-Strangways are preparinf 

 the Jurassic memou-, the former taking the rocks south of the Humber, and the 

 latter those of Yorkshire ; Mr. Jukes-Browne is writing the Cretaceous monograph • 

 and Mr. Clement Reid that on the Pliocene Beds. 



In Scotland some advance has been made in mapping the important and com- 

 plicated area of the north-west Highlands. The surveyors there were chiefly 

 engaged between Loch Stack and Ullapool, subsequently completing the area about 

 Durness and EriboU. The other parts of Scotland now being surveyed are the 



1887. X X 



