80 Reports and Proceedings — Geological Society of London. 



In this paper an account is given of the formations which include 

 some recently discovered coal-seams and naphtha-bearing sands of 

 Tertiary age in the little visited stretch of country lying to the 

 north of the Gulf of Xeros in the Mediterranean, and of the 

 western portion of the Sea of Marmora. The geological map which 

 accompanies the paper is founded on the topography of that com- 

 piled by the Eussian military staff. The lowest beds seen are soft 

 brown limestones, with nummulites of Lutetian age, overlain by blue 

 shales. These, again, are covered conformably by brownish-grey 

 calcareous sandstones, with subordinate beds of clay and shale, and 

 occasional interruptions of basalt and rhyolite, which are folded 

 into a well-marked syncline and anticline. In these sandstones 

 there are outcrops of several seams of coal, one being 3J feet thick. 

 It is a bituminous, hard, non-coking steam-coal, with a sandstone 

 floor and hard clay-roof containing impressions of dicotyledonous 

 leaves. Associated with the coal is a layer of brecciated rhyolite, 

 which may have had some influence in converting lignite into true 

 coal. The section of a trial boring, striking the coal at 122 feet 

 from the surface, is given ; and also that of a boring 225 feet deep 

 immediately below the coal. Apparently overlying the sandstones 

 are palagonite-tuffs, shales, and hard limestones of Miocene age. 

 The Eocene sandstones are occasionally overlain by soft sandy strata, 

 probably Pliocene, with which naphtha-bearing beds are inter- 

 stratified. Naphtha in quantity, under considerable gas-pressure, 

 has been obtained from borings, a section of one of which is given, 

 300 feet deep. The strata are much disturbed and are nearly 

 vertical in places. A stony clay, having no apparent connection with 

 the present drainage system, and containing scratched, striated, and 

 facetted boulders, spreads unconformably over all the formations 

 previously mentioned. At the Hora lighthouse a well-marked 

 'raised beach' occurs at 130 feet above present sea-level, sometimes 

 cemented into a concrete, in which occur Dreissena polymorpha and 

 a Neritina, probably N. danubialis. The fresh water within the Sea 

 of Marmora must at this epoch have stood at a height sufficient to 

 collect the drainage of the whole of South-Eastern Europe and 

 Western Asia, an area of at least 2,000,000 square miles, into a fresh- 

 water sea, from which the volume of water discharged (even with 

 the present small rainfall) would be not less than twice that of 

 Niagara. The Dardanelles channel is itself a gorge cut back through 

 soft horizontal Miocene strata, with every appearance of rapid erosion 

 by falling water. 



2. " On the Geological and Physical Development of Dominica ; 

 with Notes on Martinique, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, and the Grena- 

 dines." By Professor J. W. W. Spencer, Ph.D., M.A., F.G.S. 



These islands form a continuation of the volcanic chain extending 

 from Guadeloupe, though separated one from the other by embayments 

 in the submarine plateau, reaching to depths of more than 6,000 

 feet, within the line connecting the shores of the islands. These 

 submarine valleys head in cirques, like the amphitheatres which 



