Dr. J. W. Evans — Presidential Address. 553 



It would be easy to cite other cases where information of 

 considerable geological value could be obtained by boring at 

 comparatively small expense, and would, in all probability, in the 

 majority of cases lead ultimately to results of economic importance. 



It is obviously only right that any commercial advantages resulting 

 from investigations carried out at the public cost should accrue 

 to the State, and, if this principle were adopted, expenditure by the 

 Government or geological research on the lines I have suggested 

 would be sooner or later recouped by the mineral wealth rendered 

 available to the community. 



It is not, however, on terra firma alone that such investigations 

 may be usefully carried out. The floors of the shallow seas that 

 separate these Islands from one another and from the continent of 

 Europe are still almost unknown from the geological standpoint, 

 although their investigation would present no serious difficulties. 

 Joly ' has described an electrically driven apparatus which, when 

 lowered so as to rest on a hard sea-floor, will cut out and detach 

 a cylindrical core of rock, and retain it till raised to the surface. 

 Subsequently he invented a still more ingenious device, 2 in which 

 the force of the sea-water entering an empty vessel is substituted for 

 electrical power, but unfortunately neither the one or the other has 

 actually been tried or even constructed. 



Meantime, however, vertical sections up to 80 cm. (2 ft. 7^- in.) of 

 the mud of the deep seas have actually been obtained in iron tubes 

 attached to sounding apparatus employed in the course of the 

 voyage of the Gaussberg. These reveal a succession of deposits 

 of which the lower usually indicate colder water conditions than the 

 upper, and have been referred for that reason to the last Glacial 

 Period. 3 



In many places rock fragments are dredged up by fishing boats. 

 These should, of course, be used with caution in drawing conclusions 

 as to the distribution of rocks in situ on the sea-bottom, as such 

 fragments may have been transported when embedded in ice-sheets 

 or in icebergs or other forms of floating ice, or entangled in the 

 roots of floating trees; but where the rock-fragments can be shown 

 to have a definite distribution, as in those described by Grenville Cole 

 and Crook from the Atlantic to the West of Ireland, 4 and by Worth 

 from the western portion of the English Channel, 5 they may be 

 regarded as affording trustworthy information as to the geology of 

 the area. 



There seems every reason to believe that advances in submarine 



1 " On the Geological Investigation of Submarine Rocks " : Sci. Proc. Roy. 

 Dublin Soc, vol. viii, pp. 509-24, 189. 



2 "On the Investigation of the Deep Sea Deposits": ibid., vol. xiv, 

 pp. 256-67, 1914. 



3 Philippi, Die Grundproben der deutschen Siidpolar Expedition, 1901-3, 

 vol. ii, pp. 416-17, 591-8. 



4 On Rock-specimens dredged off the Coast of Ireland and their Bearing on 

 Submarine Geology, Mem. Geol. Surv. Ireland, pp. 1-35, Dublin, 1910. 



5 "The Dredgings of the Marine Biological Association" (1895-1906) as 

 a contribution to the knowledge of the geology of the English Channel : Journ. 

 Marine Biol. Assoc, vol. viii, pp. 118-88, 1908. 



