568 Reviews—H. B. Woodward’s Geology of the London District. 
“The Chalk forms the foundation of the entire area. It is followed 
by the Eocene Series, which is represented in and around London by 
the Thanet Sand and higher divisions up to the Bracklesham and 
Barton Beds. This series occupies a shallow trough formed by the 
uplift and bending of the great mass of Chalk so as to constitute what 
is known as the London Basin; and thus it covers the Chalk from 
Dartford and Croydon on the south-east to Watford and Rickmansworth 
on the north-west .. . It is with the Subsoil, not the Soil, except 
in the case of artificial accumulations of Made Ground, that the 
Architect, Physician, and the House-Hunter are concerned.” (p. 2.) 
‘The story of London is usually reckoned to commence less than 
nineteen hundred years ago, when the Britons, who had established 
a kind of fortified settlement on the rising ground now dominated by 
St. Paul’s Cathedral, were displaced by the Romans (4.p. 43)... 
The Holbourne or Fleet Stream occupied the valley to the west, and 
the lower part of its course was tidal; while the Wallbrook entered 
the Thames on the east, above the reach known as ‘ The Pool’.” (p. 3.) 
Although on a very reduced scale, the small contour-map which 
accompanies the memoir gives an exceeding clear idea of the hills, 
valleys, and streams of the London area, from Rickmansworth in the 
west to Brentwood in the east, and from Barnet and Enfield in the 
north to Ewell and Shoreham in the south. An ideal valley, well 
suited to the needs of its vast population, fed by innumerable streams 
of sweet water rising from the high grounds north and south, and 
which, but for the insanitary habits of its mediaeval and later 
inhabitants, might, as my old friend Dr. G. V. Poore} pointed out, 
have remained in sight the joy and glory of London, but, through 
constant pollution, they had compulsorily to be put underground, 
where they still flow in our sewers, serving as our unseen benefactors 
and sweetening the evils of life. 
The history of underground London, geologically speaking, takes us 
far below the greatest depths of sewers or tube-railways, but is only 
known through the all too few experimental artesian borings which 
have been made in various parts of the area of greater London, 
commencing with the historic Kentish Town boring reported upon by 
Professor Prestwich* and later on by Mr. Godwin-Austen,? which 
reached a depth of 1,802 feet. 1883 feet of red and mottled clays, 
sands, sandstone, and conglomerates were proved, but their age is 
uncertain, although most probably Paleozoic. Undoubted Devonian 
fossils were obtained from a boring at Meux’s Brewery, Tottenham 
Court Road, 1,066 feet from the surface. At Richmond Professor 
Judd records that fragments of anthracite mingled with Coal-measure 
sandstone and other Paleozoic rocks were found in considerable 
abundance, so that we may conclude that the coal under London has 
really been found, though not in situ.4 
1 London Ancient and Modern, from a Sanitary and Medical Point of View, by 
G. V. Poore, M.D., F.R.C.P. (Cassell & Co., 1889), 8vo, pp. 6 and 128. 
2 Q.J.G.8., 1856, vol. xii, pp. 6-14 (1855). 
3 Q.J.G.8., 1856, pp. 838-73; also Proc. Roy. Inst., vol.ii, p. 511. Mr. Godwin- 
Austen wrote on the boring at Meux’s Brewery, Guou. Mac., Dec. II, Vol. IV, 
pp. 474-5, 1877. 
+ Q.J.G.8., vol. xl, p. 760, 1884. 
