Yol. 68.] ANNIVEKSART ADDEESS OF THE PRESIDENT. Ixxxix 



therefore caution is necessary in the application of this principle, 

 at least in examples of gentle folding. 



In the fourth place, we may obtain a certain amount of evidence 

 if we consider the probable effects of the bearing of Godwin- Austen's 

 principle upon the lithology and distribution of sediments at the 

 time of their deposition. If movement occurs and recurs at the 

 same place and along the same direction in successive periods, it 

 will influence the physical geography during each of these periods 

 of movement. It may thus give rise to ridges, shore-lines, or 

 shallows, some of which will be registered in the absence, thickness, 

 or composition, of deposits forming, it may be, in one or in more 

 than one of the movement-periods. In this way, we may be led to 

 localize not only lines of movement but areas in which strata may 

 be expected to be of exceptional thickness or thinness. Professor 

 P. F. Kendall has successfully applied this line of argument in 

 discussing the probable limits of the South-Eastern Pennine coalfield. 

 The results of his study are embodied in the Eeport on the unproved 

 coalfields issued by the 1901 Commission. 



The careful study and correlation of all these sources of informa- 

 tion have already given us a certain amount of information as to 

 Palaeozoic rocks under the Triassic cover. This information is most 

 trustworthy near the margin of that cover, but it becomes more 

 vague and less reliable as we recede from the edge. In the Coal 

 Commission Reports some of the maps summarize and build upon 

 this information, as, for instance, that giving the possible extension 

 of the East Pennine Coalfields. But the Commission was too 

 cautious to accept in full several of the conclusions which might be 

 based upon these maps. 



(e) Importance of Borings. 



But in spite of information gathered on more or less theoretical 

 grounds, there is no getting away from the fact that ultimately we 

 shall be driven to seek most of our data in the covered area from 

 borings, and that in this exploration large sums of money will 

 have to be spent. < 



Further, there seems little doubt that in any circumstances, 

 and especially under the unsatisfactory conditions which at present 

 prevail, much of the money so spent, when not actually wasted (as 

 has frequently been the case in the past by the selection of spots 

 where geological research had already demonstrated that no coal 

 exists), may, nevertheless, appear to have been uselessly thrown 

 away. 



VOL. LXVIII. g 



