A. C. G. Cameron — Kellaicays Beds near Bedford. 69 



The long narrow sandy piece on the slopes that reach tlie 

 Boulder-clay (and its breadth expands in places) is ' white land,' 

 easily recognized even at a distance in dry weather, from its colour. 

 Again, the zone next the white land, and between it and the stony 

 (Cornbrash) soil, farmers and others call " lam earth " or loam. 

 This is the horizon, too, in which the brickfields are opened. 



There is nothing in these soils, viewed agriculturally, to force the 

 growth, and they are therefore almost useless for cropping ; yet it 

 is healthy grazing land, and cattle do well on it. Compared with 

 other mild clays, the coldness of the "lam earth" or silt is in excess. 

 It is not unusual to find osier beds attached to the brickfields, and 

 willows planted at particular spots where any considerable develop- 

 ment of silt occurs ; in such cases osier beds thrive on the hill-sides 

 equally well with those upon the water-meadows. 



Mention has been made of a saliferous rock in Bedfordshire, in 

 the lower part of the Oxford Clay, yielding a saline water con- 

 taining large quantities of salt. It is doubtful whether the true seat 

 of this water is in the Kellaways or in the underlying Oolites. It 

 seems, however, certain that the saltness is considerable where the 

 Kellaways is thicker than usual. At the same time, even a larger 

 quantity of chlorine existing in the form of common salt occurred 

 where the water was obtained from rocks that underlie the Kellaways 

 beds. 



The great value of our salt springs is for baths, and therefore the 

 directors of an establishment in the educational centre from which 

 I write, are to be congratulated on their recent discovery. There is 

 no reason for ascribing anj^ unusual thickness to the Kellaways beds 

 of Bedfordshire ; nor any serious quantity of salt. I think myself 

 that the "sandy bed with big stones" is well known to well-sinkers 

 in the clay districts as a trustworthy and palatable water-bearing 

 stratum, beyond which they have no need to sink — that is for the 

 requirements of any ordinary supply. 



The borings at Swindon and Bletchley, as a search for water, 

 were failures; the water in both cases being very salt. Far down, 

 however, in these bore-holes great developments of Kellaways beds 

 were discovered under several hundreds of feet of clay. Concerning 

 Swindon, the publications in 1886 (the boring was made in 1875) 

 show the water to have come up from the Forest Marble, and it was 

 near this horizon that the water at Bletchley was found. 



Notices of this boring appeared^ in connection with a report that 

 the borers, after passing through the Oxford Clay, had come upon 

 granite or granitic rock. 



Pieces of granitic rock did come, it appears, from these depths, 

 but there is no proof that the whole of the thickness assigned to 

 granite consisted of that rock. I passed all the samples myself as 

 Kellaways sand and stone. It has, however, been suggested ^ that 



1 See Geol. Mag. Dec. III. Vol. IV. p. 139 (1887), Prof. Hull's letter ; Dec. III. 

 Vol. VI. p. 356 (1889), A. Jukes-Browne, On the Occurrence of Granite in a Boring 

 at Bletchley. 



2 Geol. Mag. Dec. III. Vol. VI. p. 360 (1889), Granite in Boring at Bletchley, 

 A. Jukes-Browne. 



