Reports and Proceedings — Geological Society of London. 189" 



development, of a lake, with a narrow opening north-eastward to the 

 Pontic area, which occupied a large portion of the district. Thfr 

 fresh-water beds are still nearly horizontal in the Dardanelles, but 

 are much dislocated along the northern shore of the Sea of Marmora^ 

 where they contain naphtha and lignite. The overlying marina 

 (Mactra) limestones fringe the fresh-water beds as a shore-belt for 

 30 miles along this coast, and extend through the Dardanelles ta 

 the Southern Troad. 



Brackish and fresh-water Pontic strata occur in numerous detached 

 lake-basins which drained north-eastward. The Bosphorus was 

 probably cut by river action through the rim of the lowest of 

 these basins, on the recession of the Sarmatic Sea, and the iEgean 

 drainage then passed into the large, closed, brackish lake described 

 by Andrussov as occupying the Black Sea area from the Pontic 

 to the beginning of the Diluvial Period. 



The water-line of this sea lake finally receded to nearly 200 feet 

 below its present shore-line, when the Sea of Marmora stood about 

 80 feet higher. Then the water began to rise again during the 

 Pliocene, the Sea of Marmora regained its former westerly extension 

 to Gallipoli, and deposited the bed of Caspian shells on which that 

 town is built. 



The lacustrine beach at Hora, 130 feet above sea-level, com- 

 memorates the last high-water mark of the Ponto-Caspian closed 

 basin. The JSgean land had meanwhile settled down, forming 

 a large depressed area, probably bounded to the south by the 

 chain of the Northern Cyclades, and the Sarmatic beds dipped 

 westward, reversing the drainage of the country south-west from 

 Gallipoli. When the watershed of a river occupying the Dardanelles 

 Valley was worn down to the level of the Marmora, in early 

 Pleistocene times, the channel was rapidly widened and deepened 

 to its present section by the outflow of Pontic water. The 

 Mediterranean also passed the barrier of the Cyclades during the 

 Pleistocene Period, and when equilibrium was restored, the water 

 in the Sea of Marmora stood somewhere near its present level. 

 There have been various oscillations since, of which the positive 

 changes of level are indicated by Pleistocene Mediterranean deposits 

 at Samothrake xip to 650 feet, and a raised beach at Hora at 400 feet, 

 also by numerous shell banks and terraces up to 100 feet above the 

 present sea-level. There is, moreover, abundant evidence of a rise 

 to 1000 feet during or after the Glacial Period, by which a red 

 stony clay, formed at the expense of the surface-soil of a land area^ 

 has been widely spread. 



The paper is accompanied by three appendices, one on the rock- 

 specimens, by Dr. J. S. Flett ; one on the collection of Tertiary and 

 Post-Tertiary fossils, by Mr. K. Bullen Newton ; and a third, by 

 Mr. P. Holland, on species of Nummulites. 



2. "The Derby Earthquakes of March 24:th and May 3rd, 1903." 

 By Dr. Charles Davison, F.G.S. 



The undoubted earthquakes of this series were four in number. 

 The first and strongest occurred on March 24th, 1903, at 1.30 p.m., 



