812 
GEOLOGY AT THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 
Tue address of the President of the Sec- 
“tion, Sir Archibald Geikie, already pub- 
lished in this JouRNAL was conspicuous for 
the definiteness of its reliance on geolog- 
ical evidence as opposed to that derived 
from physical principles. Heclaimed, it 
will be remembered, that the importance 
of this evidence had never been weighed or 
appreciated by Lord Kelvin, while not a few 
physicists, including Darwin and Perry, are 
not in agreement with Lord Kelvin as to 
the extreme limitations imposed by his more 
recent estimate. It is interesting to note 
that almost simultaneously with the British 
Association meeting, there was published by 
the Royal Dublin Society a paper by Pro- 
fessor Joly in which he calculates that if 
the sodium in the sea and preserved in 
beds of rock salt were all derived by de- 
nudation from rocks in the earth-crust, at 
the present known rate of transport by 
rivers, from 80,000,000 to 90,000,000 years 
would have been necessary for its accumu- 
lation. 
On account of the visit of the French and 
Belgium Geologists the President’s address 
was not given till Saturday. The proceed- 
ings of the Section were therefore opened 
by papers on the South Eastern Coalfield, 
an account of which has already appeared 
in the columns of Scrence. Germane to 
this subject was a short note by Mr. Jukes- 
Browne on a boring through the Chalk and 
Gault near Dieppe. Beneath the sandy 
base of the Gault clay the waterbearing 
lower greensand was met with, and the sec- 
tion proved that the Folkestone and Wis- 
sant facies of the Gault extended for 52 
miles southward. 
No papers on the more ancient rock sys- 
tems were read during the meeting, the 
earliest rocks dealt with being the carbo- 
niferous. Mr. Gibson’s recent work in the 
North Staffordshire Coalfield is interesting 
not only because his important economic 
SCIENCE. 
[N.S. Von. X. No. 257. 
results flow chiefly from work in rocks of no 
economic value, but because it shows that 
detailed scientific work may reveal facts of 
important economic value even in a region 
pierced in every direction by mine shafts 
and worked continuously for centuries. For 
many coming years in Britain most vital 
facts, from a commercial point of view, 
with regard to the distribution of coal and 
iron, will be gradually accumulated by bor- 
ings and sinkings through the neozoic rocks. 
Unless a systematic record of these borings 
is kept at a central bureau, their value to 
the nation will be lost and work will have 
to be done over again by private individ- 
uals, at a cost of millions. Much of this 
might be saved if observations are accu- 
mulated as they are obtained so as to give 
a good idea of the sub-triassic structure of 
the whole country. 
Mr. Greenly exhibited photographs of fun- 
nel-shaped ‘pipes’ bored through the car- 
boniferous limestone of Anglesey and filled 
with deposits of sandstone continuous with 
the beds above. The report of Mr. Gar- 
wood on the zoning of the British carbonif- 
erous rocks shows that though the difficul- 
ties surrounding this subject are lessening 
they have not yet been clearedaway. Most 
of the zone fossils hitherto employed are not 
capable of more than restricted local use. 
Mr. Wedd finds that in places the Bunter 
sandstone is cemented with barium sulphate, 
a fact frequently noted in the basal beds of 
the Keuper sandstones. Professor Watts 
described and showed photographs of the 
surface of the granite under the Keuper 
marls of Leicestershire. This possessed 
many of the features of wind eroded rocks, 
and one piece of granite exhibited was 
grooved and polished and presented an 
appearance recognized by many geologists 
present as characteristic of Atolian action. 
The following new classification of the 
Pliocene deposits of the east of England was 
proposed by Mr. F. W. Harmer ; Older Plio- 
