470 Reports and Proceedings — 



charts, which runs parallel with the coasts of Essex, Suffolk, and 

 Norfolk, has a maximum depth of only 180 feet. A change to that 

 amount of depression of sea-level would lay bare the whole of the 

 sea-bed from the coast of Northumberland across to Jutland. A 

 depression of only 120 feet would produce nearly a like result ; the 

 new coast-line would in this case run from Flamborough Head to 

 Heligoland and Holstein. There would be an extension of the great 

 Germanic plain nearly to our area. The " Deep-water Channel " 

 alluded to would in either case become the course of the Thames and 

 its tributaries, till it found its way seawards to the west of the Great 

 Banks. To such an extent would this small amount of change of 

 water-level alter the whole physical character of Eastern Europe ; 

 and yet this change would be insignificant, compared wdth those 

 which this very area has repeatedly experienced. There is one other 

 feature presented by the North Sea basin. A deep submarine trough 

 has been traced at a mean distance of about fifty miles from the 

 coast line of Norway ; it commences in the meridian of Christiana, 

 and, conforming to the outline of the land, goes north beyond N. lat. 

 60 deg. South of the Naze of Norway, there are soundings of up- 

 wards of 200 fathoms ; beyond they are less, but whether the 

 decrease is progressive is not clear. Across the line of greatest 

 depth the change is abrupt. This curious feature in the outline of 

 the sea-bed is just what would have been produced by the sub- 

 sidence of the whole of the southern portion of the Scandinavian 

 region, together with fifty miles of area around, to a depth of 600 or 

 700 feet. There are good grounds for supposing that such has been 

 the process ; and the geological history of the basin seems to supply 

 the precise date of the subsidence in question. 



As a point in physical geography, it was the depression of the 

 Scandinavian mass along the line indicated which produced the 

 channels of the Skagerrach and the Cattegat, and opened a com- 

 munication from the North Sea into the Baltic depression. 



Geologically, some of the later stages or periods of the earth's past 

 history are so abundantly illustrated over the East- Anglian area, it 

 is a field in which there have been so many labourers, as to which, 

 too, there yet remain so many unsolved points, that I cannot help 

 hoping that this Section will follow to some extent the example set 

 by their brethren the geologists of France, at their annual reunions 

 extraordinaires, and make local geology a prominent subject of their 

 deliberations at this meeting. 



The points of interest alluded to belong to the great Kainozoio 

 period ; indeed it is in this portion of England alone that the com- 

 plete sequence of change, as it happened in this country, can be 

 followed out ; and as the term Kainozoio is what alone I propose to 

 employ, 1 would explain that it is a Greek compound, signifying 

 " recent living," or indicative of that general period of which the 

 fauna, in some proportion, is specifically identical as to forms, with 

 such as are now known to be living in some region or other. 



Geological Summary. — Wonderful as the progress of research has 

 been during the last fifty years, still the geologist finds himself 



