Post- Cretaceous Stratigraphy of South Nigeria. 649 



boring is that due to about 2035 feet, and the friction of the water 

 in percolating the rock accounts for the fact that the water can be 

 pumped down during the day but rises again in the night. The 

 formations penetrated are the following: — Alluvium and Lower 

 Lias 641 feet, Ehaetic Beds 52 feet, Red Marl and Lower Keuper 

 Sandstone 868 feet, Bunter Sandstone 454 feet. The quantity of 

 water drawn from the New Red Sandstone, at and below the out- 

 crop defined, amounts to not less than 20 million gallons, and the 

 total available quantity of water percolating into the Sandstone 

 amounts to about 300 millions. 



2. ' Notes on the Raised Beaches of Taltal (Northern Chile).' 

 By Oswald Hardey Evans, F.G.S. 



The town of Taltal is situated, partly on the dry bed of a broad 

 river, and partly on a gently-inclined plain that fringes the bays of 

 the coastal ranges far to the northward, and runs up the valleys to 

 a considerable altitude and distance from the coast. The material 

 of this plain consists of sands and well-rounded gravel derived from 

 the rocks of the adjacent hills, mingled with shells and some 

 isolated boulders of considerable size. The formation is impreg- 

 nated with salt, and there protrude through it curiously -weathered 

 remnants of former stacks and islets. The plain rises in terraces, 

 the highest of which are somewhat obscure, and sometimes portions 

 of these higher terraces are preserved in the stacks and islets. A 

 second coastal shelf also occurs, marked by a line of shallow 

 caverns, some excavated in igneous rock. Some, at least, of the 

 shell-accumulations associated with the plain contain pottery, and 

 are associated with Indian kitchen-middens, but the beds of shells 

 in the gravel, containing occasionally whale-bones, give satisfactory 

 evidence of the marine origin of the terraces. Some of these shells 

 are replaced by crystallized brine, and calcium sulphate occurs in 

 some sections. Profound ravines (quebr ad as) occur in the massive 

 rocks bordering the plain, although the climate is now so dry that 

 rain-erosion is practically non-existent. 



December 19th. — Sir Archibald Geikie, D.C.L., Sc.D., Sec.R.S., 



President, in the Chair. 

 The following communications were read : — 



1. ' The Post-Cretaceous Stratigraphy of Southern Nigeria.' By 

 John Parkinson, B.A., F.G.S. 



In this paper, which is a first attempt to outline the sequence of 

 the later deposits of Southern Nigeria (now including the Colony of 

 Lagos), a series of beds are described from four localities — three 

 from the western side of the Niger, and one around Calabar near the 

 Kameruns frontier. The alluvium of the river-beds and the lower 

 terraces are referred to, and the succeeding sediments grouped under 

 three heads. 



The youngest of these, termed the Benin Sands, are of wide 

 distribution, and are found extensively developed in all four areas. 

 Their almost universal appearance near the coast, and the height, 

 occasionally 300 feet, to which their denuded tops are now raised 



