TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 723 



These rocks are of Silurian and Devonian ages, and older tliau the Carboniferous. 

 Their high inclination, however, impliea that the strata are there thrown into folds, 

 and that in some neighbouring area the Carboniferous rocks must come in. In my 

 opinion they will be searched for and found. 



The boring which is now being can'ied on under my direction and that of Mr. 

 Francis Brady is an attempt to solve this most important problem, and the place 

 selected is close to Shakespeare Cliff, near Dover. We began in the grey chalk, and 

 we have got down 543 feet to the top of the weald clay. At Calais there are no 

 wealden strata, and the Carboniferous rocks occur at the very point in the geo- 

 logical section where we are now. The older strata will probably be struck at a 

 depth of less than 1,000 feet, and probably at a very much less depth. If the coal- 

 measures are proved, a discovery of vast importance will be made. If, on the other 

 hand, rocks older than the Carboniferous are struck, they will offer a basis for 

 future boruigs which will result in the discovery of these hidden coalfields, and 

 cause an economic revolution in South-eastern England as great as that which has 

 been brought about by the working of coal under the chalk in France and Belgium. 



6. On the Extension of the Scandinavian Ice to Eastern England in the 

 Glacial Period. By Professor Otto Toeell. 



1. The principal mass of solid ice that during the Glacial period extended from 

 Scandinavia as a centre advanced, according to the slope of land, to the south and 

 south-east, covering a great part of Russia in Europe, Northern Germany, and the 

 Netherlands. As ice moves according to the same laws as water, it is evident that 

 the long and deep channel of the Baltic would be a highway for the movement of 

 a great part of it, and that the resistance of land to the east would tend to cause 

 the ice to deviate towards the south-west. 



2. This can be proved by the large number of Silurian boulders from the Baltic 

 provinces, such as porphyries from Dalecarlia, Smaland, and the Aland Islands, 

 which are met with in Holstein and the Netherlands. A line drawn along the 

 axis of the Baltic will cross Holstein and Groningen, in Holland, and reach the 

 shore of Norfolk. That this Baltic-Dutch ice-stream moved over the bottom of 

 the southern part of the North Sea, and extended over the eastern part of Norfolk, 

 may be proved by the occurrence of erratics, undoubtedly of Swedish origin, in the 

 Cromer till, between Happisbmy and Cromer. Thus, I have found there the well- 

 known red porphyry from Dalecarlia, which is so common in the Glacial deposits 

 of Germany and Halleflintas from Eastern Smaland, in South Sweden. 



The succession of beds of till, boulder clay, and stratified sands and gravel on 

 the coast of Cromer, which I have visited several times within a period of more 

 than twenty years, are true Glacial deposits, identical with the Glacial beds in 

 South Sweden and North Germany. They have been produced by the combined 

 action of solid ice and Glacial rivers from it. They were described with great 

 accuracy by Mr. Clement Reid, of the Geological Survey. 



1. At the bottom are the first and second tills, true ground moraines with a bed 

 of sand between them. 



2. Above these lie stratified beds of sand and loam, probably equivalent to the 

 Middle Glacial sands in South Sweden and North Germany. 



3. Then there is an upper boulder cla)', which may be the moraine of the 

 retreating ice-stream ; and 



4. On the top other beds of sand and gravel, which I believe to have been 

 deposited \yy the rivers derived from the retreating ice. 



All these beds belong to the contorted drift as a whole. 



Not until the ice reached the shore would rivers arise from it, but when it did 

 so these rivers would form their own beds of sand and gravel. It is very likely 

 that these beds may be in part represented by the Bure valley gravels of Mr. 

 Searles Wood, which in like manner were afterwards covered Ijy the ground 

 moraines of the advancing ice, just as the oldest ' Diluvial sand ' of the German, and 

 the Alluvion ancien of Swiss geologists, are met with below the oldest ground 

 moraines. 



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