Proceedings of the British Association. 251 



points, which must exist. Mr. Phillips had ascertained, that whenever 

 a fault was inclined, the upward movement was always on the inclin- 

 ed side, a law resulting from the view just stated. The process of 

 denudation Mr. Hopkins considered as either littoral, or superficial — 

 from the action of currents on the sea-bottom ; it went on simultane- 

 ously with deposition, and would be more rapid after convulsions had 

 exposed large broken surfaces to its action, a process not consistent 

 with the preservation of delicate organic remains. So far as the re- 

 moval of these immense masses of strata had resulted from littoral 

 action, the process must have been slow, but unquestionably from 

 this source, denudation, was derived the materials of all those strata 

 which have been deposited by water. — Sir H. De La Beche stated 

 that the " ground-swell" was the most destructive form of sea-action 

 on a coast ; he described the appearance of gravelly beaches along 

 the Mendips from Shepton Mallet to the Bristol Channel, re-appear- 

 ing in Glamorganshire, where the lias conglomerate was 70 feet thick, 

 formed of the detritus of the subjacent rock ; these beaches indicat- 

 ed the elevation of the country at that particular time. In South 

 Wales the faults had been formed after the strata were contorted. — 

 Mr. Phillips observed, that when a good general solution for any class 

 of phenomena had been obtained from clear data, it gave the power 

 of interpreting other similar circumstances. The original continuity 

 of strata in many places where now absent, was sufficiently proved 

 by the manner in which they appear at the surface, their dip, direc- 

 tion, &c. Some rocks were more continuous than others, particularly 

 the limestone, which sometimes preserved the same aspect and 

 thickness for 60 miles, but here thinned out in one direction. The 

 observations of Mr. Ramsay respecting denudation might be extend- 

 ed along the Malverns and to North Wales and Ireland. 



£ On the Geology of New Zealand,' by Dr. Dieffenbach. — New 

 Zealand forms a group of mountainous islands nearly as large as 

 England and Wales, and its geology is rendered difficult by the 

 primitive forests that fringe the coast, or, where these have been 

 destroyed, by impenetrable thickets of the esculent fern. The 

 fundamental rock is everywhere clay slate, frequently containing 

 greenstone dykes, as at Port Nicholson, Queen Charlotte's Sound, 

 and Cloudy Bay ; in the neighbourhood of the dykes the clay slate 



