Vol. 56.] ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT. lxxi 



coal, in itself almost too wide for a single Address ; but to draw your 

 attention to another source of information of a more widespread kind. 

 The parts where coal can be worked are naturally limited, though 

 often extensive ; but the need for water is universal, and over a great 

 extent of country water has to be got, partly or wholly, from under- 

 ground sources by means of wells and borings. These, with trial- 

 borings made for various purposes, are mostly the sole available 

 evidence of the underground extension of various formations. 



Even in this subject it will be well to fix a topographical limit. 

 Much information has been collected dealing with various parts of 

 our country, especially as regards Triassic and Cretaceous rocks ; but 

 I propose to limit my remarks on the whole to a large district over 

 which I have myself worked, which may be roughly named the 

 South-east of England, and gives I think the best illustration of 

 the advance of this kind of knowledge within my own time. 



Underground Geology in the South-east of England. 



In bygone years many notices of wells or of groups of wells were 

 certainly published ; but seldom with details, in most cases only 

 the thickness of formations being stated or merely the depth to the 

 Chalk. Sometimes, moreover, the figures given have proved to be 

 wrong. 



So far as I know, the remarkable work of the Rev. J. Townsend, 

 practically the first general account of the geology of England, is 

 the first case in which reference is made to sets of wells as proving 

 the thickness of formations, in this case of the Chalk, of the Great 

 Oolite, and of the Inferior Oolite. 1 



Afterwards the names of Mitchell, Mylne, Clutterbuck, and 

 Clarke are prominent among our contributors to underground 

 knowledge, to be followed a little later by that of Prestwich. But, 

 as a rule, their work, as above noted, did not give much detail; and 

 it was not until 1854, when I was a student under Morris, that the 

 first goodly collection of well-sections, with trustworthy details and 

 modern classification of the Tertiary formations, was published, in 

 Prestwich's great paper 4 The Woolwich and Reading Series.' 2 



In this paper, one which will always rank among our classics, 

 fifty-five wells in the London Basin are described, most of them in 



1 ' The Character of Moses established for Veracity as an Historian, recording 

 Events from the Creation to the Deluge,' 4to, Bath, 1813 (pp. 123, 124, 129, 

 130). Nearly the whole of the book refers to geology rather than to Moses. 



3 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. x, pp. 94-97, 105, 139-154. 

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