A])fNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. xH 



society is the comfort and convenience of mankind independent of a 

 knowledge of natural products. 



e terra quoniam sunt cuncta creata. 



And, though certainly necessity and long experience have led to 

 the slow discovery of many practical rules which geology has now 

 exalted into scientific truths, still on very many subjects of import- 

 ance practice is silent when geology foresees. Thirty years ago it fell 

 to the lot of your President to publish on maps, and to explain in 

 sections, the position of certain ironstone -bands in the Oolitic series 

 of Yorkshire, and yet only a few years since they came into work, 

 though now they jield 1,800,000 tons per annum, and pay to the 

 landovtmers of that region rents probably amounting to £60,000 

 per annum. In a recent experiment for coal, near Worksop, on the 

 estate of the Duke of Newcastle, which I rejoice to hear is successful, 

 the trial is made some miles from any existing colliery, and the shaft 

 is sunk through strata which were not only devoid of coal, but, untD. 

 geology taught better things, were not believed by practical men to 

 cover coal at all. 



Iron-ores. 



The earliest notice of the iron- works of Britain is in the Com- 

 mentaries of its earliest Roman invader. According to Caesar*, iron 

 rings of a certain weight were in use, as well as brass, for money : 

 in small quantity, iron was found in the maritime j)arts, by which 

 we may understand Sussex. In a somewhat later Eoman age the 

 Forest of Dean was full of small iron-forges, among the scoriae of 

 which he fibulae, images, and coins of Trajan and later emperors. 

 In the midst of primeval forests, the principal iron-works of England 

 flourished till the middle of the 18th century ; traces survived in the 

 great wood of Andredes weald till within our own days; nor are 

 they yet extinct in the Forest of Dean, and by the shore of Win- 

 dermere. The iron trade of Sussex moved to South Wales, allured 

 by the abundance of iron-ore, accompanied by still greater abundance 

 of mineral fuel, which by coking became efiective in smelting argil- 

 laceous carbonates of iron. The same causes carried the iron trade 

 into almost every coal-tract of England, Scotland, and Ireland, till it 

 became a settled maxim, that for the profitable exercise of the art 

 of smelting iron, the iron-ore and the coal must be adjacent. Lately, 

 however, a new aspect has been given to this important trade by the 

 extension of railways in England, which have rendered it possible 

 to bring into employment the ores of iron which occur in the Oolitic 

 strata. These are plentiful in particular tracts ; they occur, as far 

 south as Weymouth, below the Kimmeridge clay ; but more abun- 

 dantly, in Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, and Lincolnshire, imme- 

 diately above the Upper Lias clays ; and in most of these counties, as 

 well as Eutland, in the midst of the Lias, above and in the Marlstone. 



* Utuntiir aut sere, aiit annulis ferreis, ad certum pondus examinatis, pro 

 nummo. Nascitur ibi plumbum album in mediterraneis regionibus, in maritimis 

 ferrum ; sed ejus exigua est copia : cere utuntur importato. — Ds Bello Gallico, 

 V. 12. 



VOL. XV. d 



