16 A. J. Jukes-Browne — The Heathfield Boring. 



during an ice age. Other actions might go on under -^ater, and others 

 would go on at the same time over land above water. These are not 

 considered here. 



Lyell seems to have realized the action when he writes (Principles, 

 eh. xvi, near end): " In . . . tlie Baltic . . . the surface freezes 

 over to the depth of 5 or 6 feet. Stones are . . . frozen in . . . and 

 lifted up on the melting ... in summer." I have not noticed any 

 other recognition. 



The agency of ice forming on water and melting, gaining in 

 thickness and losing, is thus able to denude, deepen, plane down, 

 score, striate, 'pluck,' 'sap,' deposit, fill up, elevate, lift to heights. 

 Jfot only is it able but it must perform these operations, whenever 

 certain conditions combine. All these conditions have existed in the 

 past, and now exist in sepai'ate regions of the earth : they can hardly 

 be supposed to have ne%'er combined. Such an agency ought not, 

 in speculations, to be altogether left out of account. 



V. — The Boring at Heathfield, Devon. 

 By A. J. Jukes-Browne, F.R.S., F.G.S. 

 rilHE geological importance of this boring lies in the fact that it is 

 L the deepest wliich has yet been made in the Bovey Basin, that 

 the site is nearly in the middle of that basin, and that it is 

 evidence of the great depth of the syncline or trough in which the 

 Bovey deposits lie. Although it did not reach the base of these 

 deposits it is highly desirable that we should know the exact depth 

 to which it was carried, as it is the only means of estimating the 

 minimum depth of the basin. 



An account of the boring was communicated to me in 1908 by 

 Messrs. Candy & Co., of Heathfield, and was published in this 

 Magazine for June, 1909. As the boring was made for Messrs. Candy 

 and Co. at their Heathfield Potteries, and as they would naturally 

 keep a record of the main facts, I had every reason to suppose that 

 the account which they supplied was correct so far as it went. They 

 informed me that the boring was commenced on the floor of their 

 large open pit, and was carried down to a depth of 456i feet. They 

 also stated that the depth of the pit was, and is, about 70 feet, so 

 that the total depth from the surface of the ground to the bottom of 

 the boring would be 526-i- feet. This agrees very closely with the 

 statement which they had previously made to Mr. H. B. Woodward 

 in 1900 and published by him in that year. There is no doubt that 

 the record preserved at the office of tlie firm shows those figures as 

 the total depth. 



It was therefore wntli much surprise that I found quite a different 

 account of this boring given in the recently issued memoir of the 

 Geological Survey on The Cotmiry around Newton Abbot. In 

 this memoir the chapter on Tertiary Deposits is written by Mr. C. 

 lleid, and he seems to have ascertained that the boring w'as actually 

 made by Messrs. Legraiid & Sutcliff, who supplied him with more 

 complete particulars of the strata wliicli were traversed. According 

 to their account the depth of the boring was only 400 feet and the 



