388 TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION C. 



' The Council of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 

 recommends that the site, depth, and diameter of every borehole in the British 

 Isles, exceeding 500 feet in depth, be compulsorily notified and registered in 

 a Government Office. That all such boreholes be open to Ctovernment inspec- 

 tion during their progress. That copies of the journals and other information 

 relating to the strata penetrated by the boring be filed in a Government Office 

 ■under the same restrictions as those relating to plans of abandoned mines.' 



I would go further and urge that the Government should undertake the 

 sinking of deep borings at selected points. This is no new idea. In hie 

 Presidential Address to the Geological Society of London in 1912 Professor 

 Watts pleaded most forcibly the vital importance of a State-aided under- 

 ground survey of the area to which I have referred. The work is too vast for 

 individual effort, or even for a private company to undertake. It is not 

 suggested that deep borings should be sunk with the express purpose of finding 

 coal. What is wanted is a systematic survey by borings at such spots as are 

 likely to throw light upon the structural framework of the Palaeozoic floor 

 and the thickness of its cover. 



Of course, there are difficulties in the way of such a scheme. There is 

 the expense. But in view of the enormous economic possibilities of the work, 

 and remembering that it is now possible to sink a boring to a depth of, 

 say, 1,200 feet, and to bring up 18-inch cores at a cost of less than 2,000/., it 

 cannot be reasonably argued that the expense is beyond the nation's power 

 to bear. A levy of a farthing a ton on the coal output of the United Kingdom 

 for a single year would yield something like 300,000/., a capital sum that 

 would provide in perpetuity an additional yearly grant to the Geological 

 Survey of 15,000/., which would suffice not only to carry on this work, but 

 would enable the Survey to extend its functions in the other directions I have 

 indicated. 



AlS to legal obstacles and vested mineral rights I wish to say nothing, 

 except that if the country could be convinced that this work is urgently needed 

 on national grounds, all scruples and doubts, so agitating to the official mind, 

 would speedily vanish. 



For many years I lived near our great exporting centres of the finest 

 steam coal in the world ; and as I watched the steady and incessant streams 

 of coal-wUggons, year in, year out, coming down from the hills, I was con- 

 stantly reminded that we are rapidly draining the country of its industrial 

 life-blood. Is it an extravagant demand to ask that an infinitesimal fraction 

 of this irreplaceable Nature-made wealth should be set aside to provide the 

 means for the discovery and development in our islands of new mineral fields ? 



Chemical and Microscopical Investigation of Coal Seams. 



The recovery of bye-products in the coking of coal, which up to the begin- 

 ning of the War v;as almost exclusively undertaken by the Germans, is likely in 

 the future to become an important British industry. This will ultimately 

 demand a thorough knowledge of the microscopic and chemical structure of all 

 the important coking seams in our coalfields. 



Remembering how varied both in microscopical structure and chemical com- 

 position the individual laminae of many of the thick coal-seams are, it will 

 readily appear how important such a detailed investigation may become, having 

 regard to the great variety of these bye-products and their industrial applica- 

 tion. Moreover, thin seams, hitherto discarded, may pay to be worked, as 

 may also an enormous amount of small coal, estimated at from 10 to 20 per cent, 

 of the total output, which up to the present has been wasted. 



Geology of Petroleum-. 

 It has been frequently remarked that in order to account for the vast 

 accumulation of coal in the Carboniferous strata, it is necessary to postulate a 

 special coincidence over great areas of the Northern Hemisphere of favourable 

 conditions of plant growth, climate, sedimentation, and crustal subsidence; con- 

 ditions which, although they obtained at other geological periods over relatively 

 small areas, were never repeated on so vast a scale. Having regard to the 

 estimates of coal deposits in Cretaceous and Tertiary strata, published in our 



