COOKE : WORK FOR LINCOLNSHIRE GEOLOGISTS. 209 



rivers, are practically virgin ground, and valuable results might be 

 achieved by those who would undertake the investigation of them. 



In the problems of the second class, which I shall call genetic, 

 there is ample scope for the energies of the chemist and the 

 microscopist. 



The prosperity of Lincolnshire depends more upon agriculture 

 than on any other factor, and yet no attempts seem to have been 

 made to examine or to develop the very valuable beds of phosphates 

 with which the rocks of the county abound. Patient work, chemical 

 and microscopical, on these, as well as on the iron-bearing beds, the 

 clays, the chalk and flints, and the Fuller's earths would all lead to 

 the acquisition of valuable commercial and scientific results. The 

 flints which are so characteristic a feature of our Wolds offer 

 material sufficient for the study of a life-time. A satisfactory 

 explanation of the natural processes whereby those beautiful agate 

 flints, with their variously-coloured concentric bandings of silica, have 

 been formed, has yet to be offered to the scientific world. 



The nature, constitution, and chemical composition of Lincoln- 

 shire soils is a subject of which we, at present, know nothing. And 

 yet there is no branch of science which so closely affects the 

 well-being of the county's inhabitants as does this. The dependence 

 of the health of the animal and the vegetable kingdoms upon the 

 character of the soils and subsoils upon which they exist, is so 

 evident to all, that there is no necessity for me to further enlarge 

 upon the value of accumulating statistics relating to, and chemical 

 analyses of, the soils from all parts of the county. To the botanist 

 too, such statistics would be specially valuable. 



The inter-relations that exist between the flora and the soils of 

 a district is an interesting and a difficult theme, upon which the 

 chemical geologist and the botanist must join forces if results having 

 any pretensions to exactness are to be accomplished. 



The origin of the colouring matter from which the Red and the 

 Pink chalks of our Wolds take their names is an important and 

 interesting question of which we, at present, possess very little 

 information. It has been suggested that this colouring matter, 

 which is a peroxide of iron, has been carried into the originally grey 

 chalk by water that had first percolated through a seam of nodular 

 iron. But there are others who take the opposite view, and say that 

 the colouring has not been due to the introduction of iron, but that 

 the colour was imparted to the calcic-carbonate at the time that the 

 chalk was deposited. The point is a debatable one, and it awaits 

 the accumulation of further data before it can be satisfactorily 

 explained. 



July 1896. ° 





