﻿474 Reports and Proceedings — 



or in those of the School of Mines or other public institutions, and 

 also notices of all the new researches on the metamorphism and 

 modifications of rocks. The work is compiled with the same care 

 as the previous volumes, and reflects much credit on the pains taken 

 in rendering in a condensed form the notices and abstracts so very- 

 useful and instructive ; for, without this aid, it would be impossible 

 for any ordinary student to become acquainted with the wide range 

 of geological literature. The subjects are systematically arranged 

 under lithological, historical, geographical, and dynamical geology, 

 besides notices of general works on the subject. Some attention is 

 also given to memoirs on economic geology, and a neatly-executed 

 coloured map is given by M. Delesse. This map, designed M. Ae. 

 Babinski, although on a small scale, shows in a simple and striking 

 manner the agricultural resources of France, and the relative values 

 of the different districts, and the distribution of the vineyards, 

 commons, and forests. J. M. 



laiEZE'OiaTS J^IS^ID I^iaOCIHlIEZDIlNrG-S. 



•'' On the Geological Significance of the Boring at Messrs. 

 Meux's Brewery, London." By Robert A. C. Godwin-Austen, 

 F.R.S., V.P.G.S., etc. Bead before the British Association at 

 Plymouth (Section C). 



The author commenced by pointing out that it was very generally 

 known that this undertaking, after passing through a great thickness 

 of Chalk, met with a very insignificant representative of the sands 

 which underlie the Chalk in the south-east of England, thence at once 

 passed into strata which, by characteristic fossils, were identified as 

 Palaeozoic, and of Upper Devonian age. This was just as had been 

 anticipated as to the absence of any portion of the Oolitic series there, 

 and confirmed what many years since had been supposed to be the 

 subterranean structure of the South of England ; indeed, it might 

 fairly be stated that geologists generally have been of ojDinion that a 

 band of Paleeozoic rocks extended from Westphalia westwards, and 

 passed somewhere beneath the Secondary formation of the ^outh-east 

 of England. The importance of determining the course of such 

 Paleeozoic band was, that along the whole of the exposed part of its 

 course, as from its extreme eastern place to near Valenciennes, it 

 had dependent on it on the north the productive Coal-measures of 

 Westphalia, Belgium, and the North of France. From Valenciennes 

 westwards the Coal-measures were not exposed at the surface, but 

 were reached beneath the Chalk formation, and from.the underground 

 workings the relations of the several members of the Paleeozoic series 

 were known to correspond exactly with those where the series were 

 exposed, as was the case, also, where it was again seen at the sur- 

 face in the Boulonnais, and at sundr^'^ other valleys of elevations 

 along the axis of Artois. The whole of the Coal-measures of Belgium 

 and North of France must be understood as occupying a trough 

 formed out of the older members of the great Palgeozoic series, and 

 the explanation given of the preservation of this extended and 



