42 Correspondence— Mr. S. V. Wood, Jun. 



of Mother Earth ever having been afflicted with St. Vitus' dance to 

 this extent, I do not see how it is possible that such startling in- 

 equalities in elevation or depression can have gone on in solid rocks 

 at the surface without shattering them to pieces. 



Will you also allow me to tell Mr. Mackintosh that I have tried 

 to explain how subaerial agency may begin the work of escarpment- 

 making on p. 87, of the Geological Survey Memoir on the country 

 round Stockport, Macclesfield, Congleton, and Leek. — A. H. Green. 



Monk Bretton, Barnsley, 

 December 9ih, 1867. 



REPLY TO MR. W. BOYD DAWKINS, ON THE THAMES VALLEY 

 DEPOSirS, &c.; AND TO MR. A. H. GREEN, ON THE OUSE 

 VALLEY AT BUCKINGHAM. 



Sir, — Before replying to Mr. Dawkins' criticism, I must acquit my- 

 self of any undue use of the letter to me to which he refers. I wrote 

 him in reply to it, pointing out privately what I have now done 

 publicly ; and asking him, as I valued his palaeontogical evidence, 

 to correct what I considered to be a hasty error in his geology. 

 All that I received was a letter, refusing in indignant terms to do 

 this, and challenging me to make out my case. Not the faintest in- 

 timation was given me of the mistake in places which Mr. Dawkins 

 now says he made, notwithstanding that I had pointed out to him that 

 Mountnessing and Ingatestone had nothing to do with the valley of 

 the Blackwater, and the position of the Glacial clay near Witham 

 had been shown by me a year previously, in sect, nine of my paper, 

 at page 348 of your third volume.^ He must have been hurried 

 indeed, if he ran his finger up the Wid to Ingatestone and Mount- 

 nessing, instead of up the Blackwater to Witham, when the latter 

 is not only fifteen miles distant from them, but is in another 

 Ordnance Sheet. It was only upon this failure to get corrected, or 

 even qualified, in an unobtrusive way, what I consider to be 

 a fundamental error, that I sent in the note to my paper then 

 awaiting its turn for reading at the Geological Society. 



With respect to the brick-earths of Grays and Crayford, I have 

 given so many sections in illustration of their position in the 

 memoir that accompanies my maps in the Geological Society's 

 library, that it would only be unduly occupying your space to 

 endeavour to illustrate the subject here. They must await the 

 investigation of impartial observers, who will study and master, not 

 one, but the whole of the highly complex features of the Eastern 

 Thames valley. All that I would invite Mr. Dawkins, and it seems 

 Professor Morris also, to do, is to show that the gravel of the lower 

 terrace, which, with a thickness of fifteen feet, passes under the 

 greater part of the Grays hrickearth, be not a part of the same sheet 

 which occupies the valleys of the Darent and Cray, and to which 



I See Little Braxted, which is in the Blackwater valley, and only one mile from 

 Witham Station. As the Glacial clay comes near to Witham, it may very probably 

 ba at Witham station, but if so, is not visible, in the Railway section the only bed 

 seen being the gravel. 



