Vol. 6S.] PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. CIX 



survey by boring, such as is now in progress and has long been 

 carried on in Holland, will meet the case. This should be under- 

 taken by the Government, who in return might claim to exercise 

 authority over the coalfields which such a survey could scarcely 

 fail to bring to light. 



Dr. A. M. Davies called attention to some further evidence for 

 Prof. Kendall's view, in support of the tectonic importance of the 

 Charnian system in the buried Palaeozoic floor north of the London 

 Basin. If the direction of the Lickey anticline be followed to the 

 south-east for 22 miles, Eatsford is reached, where a boring has 

 proved Coal Measures resting upon Silurian ; 6 miles farther is 

 Daylesford, where, many years ago, Prof. Hull discovered con- 

 glomeratic marlstone full of Palaeozoic pebbles ; while 6 miles 

 farther still is a point 3 miles east of the Burford boring, where 

 the Palaeozoic floor proved to be over 800 feet below sea-level. The 

 prc-Cretaceous folding of the Jurassic rocks also follows the Charnian 

 trend, and there are doubtful suggestions of the same trend in the 

 Palaeozoic rocks under London, but beyond this it could not be 

 traced. 



Mr. G. Baeeow remarked that, having examined most of the 

 specimens obtained by boring from the Palaeozoic floor under 

 London, he had little doubt that the red rocks were all of Old Eed 

 Sandstone age. Where cores were obtained, many of the specimens 

 were quite unlike any known Trias in England ; they were far 

 too hard, and often had too high a dip to be of Triassic age. 

 Starting from ClifFe, near Graveseud, and going westwards, the 

 sequence of Palaeozoic rocks, on the whole, seemed to be ascending. 

 The speaker was especially interested in the saltness of the water 

 usually met with in the old rocks, where the upper water had been 

 shut out by a tube lining. He inclined to the opinion that, in 

 many cases, this represented part of the original sea- water in which 

 the beds had been deposited. The beds in such cases had never 

 been brought sufficiently near the surface for this water to have 

 been removed. 



Dr. A. Vatjghan thought that a careful revision of the horizons 

 indicated by the exhibited fossils was needed. Eor example, the 

 specimens labelled ' Spirifer disjunctas Sow.' from the Turnford 

 boring might be safely labelled Upper Devonian or basal Carboni- 

 ferous. Turning to tectonics, he thought that, although no precise 

 information respecting the buried Palaeozoic floor could be deduced 

 from a scrutiny of the South-Western Province, yet the broad 

 features were probably similar in the tAvo cases, namely :— 



(1) In the south, a folded and overthrust belt; followed on the north by 



(2) a wide ripple of east-and-west ridges and troughs, widening out nortli- 



wards into 



(3) the broad coal-basins of South Wales and of Bristol and the Forest of 



Dean. 



Accumulating evidence pointed to the deposition of these two coal- 

 fields in distinct basins, separated by contemporaneous ridges, the 

 origin of which might be ascribed to the effect of meridional stress 

 upon deposits filling deep, delta-like indentations in an east-and- 



