Geology* 401 



l'J. Electricity in Modern Life ; by G. W. de Tunzelmann. 

 27'J pp. Bvo. London, 1889. (Walter Scott.) — The widespread 

 interest in electricity and its applications during the past decade 

 or two has called out a large number of books, of varying scope 

 and method, devoted to the different parts of the subject. The 

 present volume starts with the design to present the matter in 

 such a form as to be attractive and intelligible to the ordinary 

 reader with little or no scientific training, and this plan is carried 

 through with satisfactory success. On many topics, such as the 

 telegraph, the telephone and telephone exchanges, electric light- 

 ing, etc., the reader will find information of interest here, which 

 is not always easily accessible elsewhere. 



II. Geology. 



1. TJ\e Coal formation in southeastern England. — Professor 

 W. Boyd-Dawkins has recently reported on the results of a bor- 

 ing at Dover, opposite Calais, which was commenced in 1886, on 

 his recommendation, by the South-Eastern Railway and Channel 

 Tunnel Company. The coal measures were reached at a depth 

 of 1204 feet, and good coal was found 20 feet below. Much is 

 expected from further exploration. At Calais, the coal-measures 

 had previously been reached at a depth of 1104 feet. The coal 

 area extends thence along the boundary of France and Belgium. 

 The Westphalian field is 7218 feet thick and contains 11 V coal beds 

 yielding 294 feet of workable coal ; at Liege the thickness is 7600 

 feet, the number of coal beds 86, the thickness of good coal 212 

 feet; at Monz these figures are 9400, 110, 250; in Somersetshire 

 southeast of South Wales, 8400 feet, 55 and 98; in South Wales, 

 1100, 75 and 120. The coal-measures are represented as upturned 

 and lying unconformably beneath the Oolitic and Cretaceous 

 strata. 



The probable existence of the coal-measures in southeastern 

 England was first urged by Godwin- Austen in 1856, who showed 

 that the coal fields of South Wales in North Somerset and the 

 Belgian were characterized by long, narrow, east and west folds 

 and lay in nearly the same line; and pointed out the Thames 

 Yalley and the Weald of Kent and Sussex as places where they 

 possibly might be discovered. Professor Prestwich, of the Coal- 

 commission of 1856-71, reported in favor of this conclusion, and 

 with full details as to the probable facts. A well was conse- 

 quently bored in 1871 by the Sub-Wealden Exploration Com- 

 mittee at Netherfield, in the Wealden region ; but at a depth of 

 1905 feet it was stopped after passing only 60 feet into the Oxford 

 clay. Eleven years later an anticlinal of Devonian and Silurian 

 was found in a boring in the area of London at Ware at a depth 

 of about 800 feet, and near Richmond at a depth of 1289 feet, 

 with the oolite unconformably superposed only 87 feet thick, in- 

 dicating as Professor Boyd-Dawkins states, that coal should be 

 looked for in the synclinal band farther south ; and there it was 

 found. 



