286 Correspondence — Mr. R. M. Deeley. 



Brady, Engineer of the Channel Tunnel, under the advice of 

 Professor Boyd Dawkins, F.R.S., and an experimental boring was 

 commenced in a position at the foot of Shakespear's Cliff, near 

 Dover, in 1895-6." 



It would be difficult to compress more errors into one sentence 

 than are in the above quotation. The only statement which is true 

 relates to the place of the boring. The credit of experimentally 

 jDroving the existence of the coalfield is not due to Mr. Francis 

 Brady, but to Sir Edward Watkin, Chairman both of the South- 

 Eastern Eailvvay and of the Channel Tunnel Company, who acted 

 under my advice, and sent on to me all reports connected with the 

 boring. Mr. Bi'ady was simply engineer in charge of the borehole, 

 and acted under Sir Edward Watkin's instructions. I never had 

 occasion to advise Mr. Brady. Nor was the boring " commenced iu 

 1895-6." It was begun in 1886, and from that time down to the 

 discovery of the Coal-measures in 1890, the work of identifying the 

 specimens and fixing the horizons of the strata penetrated — or, in 

 other words, all the geology — fell to me. The last of a long series 

 of reports to Sir Edward Watkin is dated July 8th, 1891. 



All this is ancient history. The progress of the boring was 

 recorded by me, from time to time, in the Kej)orts of the British 

 Association (1887, 1890, 1899), and in the publications of the 

 Royal Institution (June 6th, 1890) and of the Manchester Geo- 

 logical Society (1890-3-4-7). They also were communicated to 

 the public at large in The Contemporary Bevieto (April, 1890), in 

 Nature (March 6th, 1890), The Colliery Guardian, and The Iron and 

 Coal Trade Bevieiv. Nor is the attribution of the credit to the 

 wrong man new. An attempt was exposed as far back as 1897, 

 after a full debate before the Manchester Geological Society, in 

 which Sir Edward Watkin's claim was amply vindicated. Still 

 later the history of the discovery was dealt with in my statement on 

 the Buried Coalfields of Southern England, prepared at the request 

 of the Royal Commission of Coal Supplies in 1903 (Final Report, 

 pt. X, p. 28). 



It is not, therefore, from lack of sources of information that 

 Professor Hull has written the above pai'agraph in a work which 

 professes to give the last word on British coalfields. I write this 

 in justice to the memory of an old friend, who proved the truth of 

 God win- Austen's theory bj'^ practical experiment, the first of a series 

 which is likely to yield, in the future in Kent, important economic 

 results, similar to those brought about in the past by similar borings 

 in Northern France and Belgium. W. Boyd Dawkins. 



Manchester. 



3Iaij 5th, 1905. 



MOUNTAIN- BUILDING. 



Sir, — The theory that mountainous areas have been produced by 



lateral thrust crushing and compressing large areas of country is, 



I think, now generally accepted ; for it has been proved that such 



imountainous regions as have been carefully surveyed are found to 



