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



off from the sides of the bore may easily find their way to the 

 bottom. 



A good illustration, and one of many that might be cited, of the 

 misdirected energy that is sometimes expended in prospecting 

 operations, was afforded a few years ago by a company that put down 

 a boring for oil through more than a thousand feet of granite without 

 being aware of the nature of the rock that was being traversed. In 

 this case a percussion drill was employed, but a few minutes' 

 examination of the material should have enabled the engineer in 

 charge, supposing he had even an elementary knowledge of geology, 

 to save hundreds of pounds of needless expenditure. The sum-total 

 of the funds which have been uselessly expended in this country 

 alone in hopeless explorations for minerals, in complete disregard of 

 the most obvious geological evidence, would have been sufficient to 

 defray many times over the cost of a complete scientific underground 

 survey. 



If research is to be carried out economically and effectively, it 

 must be organized systematically and directed primarily with the 

 aim of advancing knowledge. If this aim be well and faithfully 

 kept in view, material benefits will accrue which would never have 

 been thought to be sufficiently probable to warrant the expenditure 

 of money on prospecting. 



It is, however, not only in the areas occupied by Secondary or 

 Tertiary rocks that systematic boring is urgently needed. There are 

 many other localities where important information as to the structure 

 of the rocks could probably be obtained in this manner. Opinion is 

 very much divided as to the relation of the Devonian to the older 

 rocks in South Devon and Cornwall, 1 but there is little doubt that 

 a series of judiciously placed borings would solve the problem without 

 difficulty. In North Devon and West Somerset, the question as to 

 whether the Foreland Grits are a repetition by faulting of the 

 Hangman Grits could also be settled at once by borings in the 

 Foreland Grits and in the Lynton Beds. 



In the North of England, again, there are many points where the 

 strata exposed at the surface are low down in the Carboniferous, and 

 it would be comparatively easy to ascertain the nature of the earlier 

 rocks beneath them, with regard to which we are much in need of 

 information. 2 



1 I have already referred to the economic importance of this area. The 

 desirability of ascertaining its true geological structure is too obvious to need 

 emphasis here. 



2 The recent borings for mineral oil in the Carboniferous rocks of Derbyshire 

 were put down largely by means of public funds, and such success as they have 

 attained has been due to the fact that they were directed by expert geologists ; 

 but there can be little doubt that, if they had been carried out as part of 

 a carefully thought-out scheme of underground exploration wherever it was 

 needed to elucidate the structure of the country, economies would have been 

 effected and the sum-total of our knowledge even from the economic standpoint 

 would have been far greater. It is a pity that these borings have been carried 

 out by means of the percussion process. It is, however, usually employed in 

 borings for oil — in America almost exclusively — and in war-time its greater 

 speed was no doubt an important factor in the decision to resort to it. 



