666 REPORT — 1895. 



Section C— GEOLOGY. 

 President of the Section.— W. Whitakeb, B.A., F.R.S., F.G.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12. 

 The President delivered the following- Address :— 



Undeegkound in Suffolk and its Borders. 



When the British Association revisits a town it is not unusual for the Sectional 

 Presidents to refer to the addresses of their local predecessors, and to allude to the 

 advance of their science since the former meeting-. I have at all events tried to 

 follow this course, with the sad result of having to chronicle a fallino- hack rather 

 than an advance in our methods of procedure ; for at the meeting of 1851 all the 

 Sectional Presidents had the wisdom not to give an address, and of all the inven- 

 tions of later years I look upon the presidential address as perhaps the worst. 



Had I the courage of my opinion I should not now trouble you ; but an 

 official life of over thirty-eight years has led me to do what I am told 'to do, and to 

 suppress my own ideas of what is right. After all it is the fault of the Sections 

 themselves that they should suffer the evil of addresses. They could disestablish 

 the institution without difliculty. 



On these occasions it is not usual to allude to the personal losses our science 

 has had in the past year ; but there are times when the lack of a familiar presence 

 can hardly be passed over, and since we last met we have lost one of our most 

 constant friends, who had served us long and well, and had been our Secretary for 

 a far longer time than any other holder of that office. When we were at Oxford 

 last summer none of us could have thought that it was our last meetine- with 

 William Topley. 



I do not now msan to say anything on the origin or on the classification of the 

 various divisions of the Crag and of the Drift that occur so plentifully around us, 

 and form the staple interest of East Anglian geology. These subjects, which are 

 the more interesting from being controversial, I leave to my brother-hammerers, 

 and without claiming the credit of magnanimity in so doing, having said what I 

 had to say on them in sundry Geological Survey Memoirs. The object of this address 

 is to carry you below the surfr.ce, and to point out how much our knowledge 

 of the geology of the county in which we meet has been advanced by workers in 

 anotiier field, by engineers and others in their search for water. As far as possihle 

 allusion will be made only to work in Suftolk ; but we must occasionally invade 

 the neighbouring counties. 



This kind of evidence has chiefly accumulated since the meeting of the Associa- 

 tion at Ipswich in 1851 ; for of the 476 Suffolk wells of which an account, with 



