British Association. 221 
The President then pointed out that the known and the probable 
dislocations in the strata in the environs of Bath are numerous; one 
of them ‘has shifted the strata vertically as much as 200 feet.’ The 
rent through which the hot water rises traverses in its upper part, 
300 feet of horizontal beds of Lias and Trias, and, lower down, 
inclined and broken strata of the subjacent Coal-measures; as deter- 
mined by William Smith in 1817. The fissure existed in the lower 
rocks long prior to the formation of the unconformable horizontal 
beds above; and these have been broken, along the old line of weak- 
ness, by a shock, perhaps, at a not very remote period, geologically 
speaking. 
Among the solid contents of the Bath Waters, Professor Roscoe 
has lately discovered, by means of spectrum-analysis, minute quan- 
tities of copper, strontium, and lithium; and after mentioning this 
interesting fact, and explaining the nature of the process in which 
the spectroscope is so successfully used, Sir C. Lyell described a 
remarkable hot spring issuing deep down in the Clifford Amalgamated 
Mines (formerly the United Mines), near Redruth, in Cornwall, from 
a metalliferous fissure known as the Wheal-Clifford Lode, which had 
been pierced at the depth of 1350 feet from the surface. Mr. Waring- 
ton W. Smyth found the temperature of the spring to be 122°-F, 
(possibly 124° F. a little further east), and the lode, from 6 to 12 feet 
wide, to have elvan on one side and killas on the other, with a vein-stuff 
composed chiefly of cellular pyrites of copper and iron, through 
which the hot water freely percolates ; whilst higher up the vein is 
filled with ‘quartz and other impermeable substances which obstructed 
the course of the hot spring, so as to prevent its flowing out on the 
surface of the country.’ Professor W. A. Miller finds the quantity 
of solid matter in this hot mineral spring to be four times as much as 
that in the Bath Waters. ‘Its composition is also in many respects. 
very different; for it contains but little sulphate of lime, and is almost 
free from the salts of magnesium. It is rich in the chlorides of cal- 
cium and sodium, and it contains one of the new metals—czsium, 
never before detected in any mineral spring in England; but ‘its 
peculiar characteristic is the extraordinary abundance of lithium,’ 
which constitutes ‘no less than a twenty-sixth part of the whole of the 
solid contents.’ ‘According to a rough estimate which has been sent 
to me by Mr. Horton Davey,’ observed the speaker, ‘the Wheal- 
Clifford Spring yields no less than 250 gallons per minute, which is 
almost equal to the discharge of the King’s Bath or chief spring of 
this city... As to the gases emitted, they are the same as those of 
the Bath Water—namely, carbonic-acid, oxygen, and nitrogen.’ Had 
the Wheal-Clifford Spring reached the surface, Sir Charles calculates 
that it would have issued with a temperature little inferior to that 
observed in the mine; and its poorness in magnesium, he regards as 
an objection to its being supplied by sea-water, unless the magnesium 
is ‘left behind in combination with some of the elements of the de- 
composed and altered rocks through which the thermal waters may 
have passed.’ 
Some remarks were incidentally made on the probability of the 
