PLANNING THE LAND OF BRITAIN 489 



No one Government Department has care of the land of Britain as a 

 whole. The Royal Commission on the location of industry has a task which 

 implies a complete planning of the whole country. The institution of a 

 permanent advisory scientific committee might properly be recommended 

 on the ground that natural factors control the planning of the land. The 

 study of natural factors is the concern of Sections of the British Association, 

 and that body might well form its own committee of expert opinion to work 

 together for the benefit of the whole country. 



Prof. P. G. H. BoswELL, O.B.E., F.R.S. (speaking at short notice in the 

 place of Prof. H. L. Hawkins, F.R.S.), said that it is probably true that in 

 no other area in the world, size for size, is there such a variety of rocks 

 exposed as in Britain. He outlined the four broad divisions of the geological 

 column — the great eras of the pre-Cambrian (with few or no traces of 

 life), the Paleozoic (with evidence of ancient organisms), the Mesozoic, and 

 the Cainozoic (the era of recent life, culminating in man). The broad 

 distribution of the rocks of these several eras is as follows. The pre- 

 Cambrian occupies the area of the Scottish Highlands, north of the Lowland 

 Basin, Anglesey, strips of North and South Wales, and certain smaller 

 but significant areas on the Welsh Borders and in the Midlands. The 

 rocks are mainly crystalline : granites, gneisses, schists, quartzites, etc. 

 The older Palaeozoic rocks occupy the southern uplands of Scotland, the 

 Lake District, the Isle of Man, most of Wales, parts of Cornwall, and 

 smaller areas in the Midlands, and consist of slates, mudstones, sandstones 

 and volcanic rocks of various types. 



The newer Palaeozoic rocks, of considerable commercial importance, 

 constitute a belt dipping oflf the older rocks, and occupying the Central 

 Lowlands of Scotland, Northumberland and Durham, the Pennine region, 

 the Welsh Borderlands, South Wales, the Bristol area, Devon and Cornwall, 

 and patches of country in the Midlands ; also the underground of London 

 and Kent. Sandstones, limestones and coal measures are the dominant 

 rock types. 



The Mesozoic rocks form still another belt trending roughly north-east 

 to south-west, from the Yorkshire coast to the south coast. They consist 

 •of spreads of sandstone and marl, escarpments of limestone and broad 

 areas of clay. The Cainozoic or Tertiary rocks are mainly confined to the 

 Eastern Counties, the London Basin, and the Hampshire Basin, and are 

 marked by deposits of unconsolidated sands, clays and brickearths. Spread 

 as a blanket, but irregularly, over all the land of Britain are the products of 

 the Great Ice Age — gravels, sands and clays — thickest, of course, in the 

 lower ground to the south-east. 



Thus from the pavement of oldest rocks in the north-west there dip off 

 to the south-east successive slices or wedges of newer rocks. 



In planning for the future, there arise two considerations : (a) the 

 suitability of the land for certain specific purposes, and (b) the desirability 

 of its utilisation in a particular way. These considerations have to be 

 balanced one against another and in relation to the economic development 

 of the country as a whole. In most instances a particular unit of land could 

 be used for several purposes ; then the planning scheme should be directed 

 to determining and advising upon the best use. The absence of planning 

 in the past has led to wastage of money, a procedure comparable with the 

 dumping of quarry refuse on the unworked area of good rock and its 

 subsequent removal at considerable cost. The influence of geology upon 

 planning may be conceived to be in large part indirect ; but always, in 

 alliance with climatology, it exercises an unobtrusive control over faunal, 



