Dr. J. W. Evans — Presidential Address. 551 



VI. — British Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 Bournemouth, 1919. 



Address to the Geological Section. By J. W. Evans, D.Sc, 

 LL.B., F.R.S., President of the Section. 



(Concluded from p. 517.) 



ANOTHER direction in which the work of the Survey could with 

 advantage be extended is in the execution of deep borings 1 on 

 carefully thought-out schemes by which a maximum of information 

 could be obtained. Both in Holland and Germany borings have been 

 carried out to discover the nature of the older rocks beneath the 

 Secondary and Tertiary strata, and Professor Watts, in his Presidental 

 Address to the Geological Society in 1912 (Proc. Geol. Soc, 

 pp. lxxx-xc), has dwelt on the importance of exploring systematically 

 the region beneath the wide spread of the younger rocks that covers 

 such a great extent of the East and South of England. Professor 

 Boulton, my predecessor in this Chair, has endorsed this appeal, but 

 nothing has been done or is apparently likely to be done in this 

 direction. It seems extraordinary that no co-ordinated effort should 

 have been made to ascertain the character and potentiality of this 

 almost unknown land that lies close beneath our feet and is the 

 continuation of the older rocks of the west and north to which we 

 owe so much of our mineral wealth. It is true that borings have 

 been put down by private enterprise, but, being directed only by the 

 hope of private gain and by rival interests, they have been carried 

 out on no settled plan, and the results and sometimes the very 

 existence of the borings have been kept secret. The natural 

 consequences of this procedure have been the maximum of expense 

 and the minimum of useful information. 



Unfortunately in recent years percussion or rope boring, which 

 breaks up the rock into fine powder, has more and more, on account 

 of its cheapness, replaced the use of a circular rotating drill which 

 yields a substantial cylindrical core that affords far more information 

 as to the nature of the rocks and the geological structure of the 

 district. If private boring is still to be carried on, the adoption of 

 the latter procedure should be insisted on, even if the difference of 

 cost has to be defrayed by the Government. It is quite true that 

 a considerable amount of useful information can be collected by 

 means of a careful microscopic examination of the minute fragments 

 which alone are available for study, so that the nature of the rocks 

 traversed can be recognized ; but the texture of the rock is destroyed, 

 as well as any evidence which might have been available of its larger 

 structures and stratigraphical relations, and almost all traces of fossils. 

 It is, too, impossible to tell with certainty the exact depth at which 

 any particular material was originally located, for fragments broken 



1 I have not space to deal here with the shallow borings in soft strata which 

 have been so successfully conducted on the Flanders front during the War by 

 Captain W. B. E. King, of the Geological Survey. Similar borings have been 

 already carried out by the Survey on a limited scale, but in the light of the 

 experience that has now been gained we may look for a widely extended use of 

 the method both by private workers and by the Survey officers. 



