48 MB. W. WHITAKEB OX SOME [Feb. I9O3, 



recorded the presence of Beading Beds in a well to the south-west 

 of Brettenham. 



Prof. Boyd Dawkins accepted the first speaker's view as to these 

 sections, and called attention to the fact that the Boulder-Clay series 

 was irregular in thickness, because it was deposited on a land- 

 surface of bill, valley, and ravine, levelling up the valleys, and being- 

 thickest in the deepest valleys. This was the case throughout the 

 British Isles, on the west as well as on the east of the Pennine chain. 



Dr. B. L. Jack said that the point which had appealed to him 

 most forcibly was the evidence furnished by the wells in question 

 regarding former erosion, some channels, or at least depressions, 

 having been recognized even in the Crag. Ancient depressions, 

 whether filled up with Glacial Drift or merely with river-gravels, 

 seemed to afford evidence of a pre-existing higher level of the land 

 with reference to the sea, since rivers could not scoop out valleys 

 below sea-level, except perhaps to a limited extent by ' pot-holing ' 

 action. Glaciers confined in valleys might, in his opinion, grind 

 out basins to any depth, but he could not see how an extensive ice- 

 sheet could grind out depressions far away from the mountainous 

 region which set it in motion. It was unfortunate that some of 

 the Suffolk wells had, after attaining a certain depth, been continued 

 as bores ; and that with a plant which did not produce a core, but 

 merely pounded up the strata to chips and dust. He could have 

 wished — and no doubt the owners of the land would agree with 

 him- — that the Drift in the Suffolk depressions bad contained 

 payable gold, for then, as in Australia, these would have been 

 followed and traced out. In Victoria, for instance, rich deep leads 

 had been followed for many miles, and whole river-systems, differing 

 from the present ones, had been mapped out. In some of these 

 channels, river-alluvia had been covered by one, two, or even three 

 successive flows of basaltic lava. In some Queensland districts, 

 where gold and sapphires occurred in the Tertiary drifts, fragments 

 of river-courses had been traced for considerable distances by the 

 connection of series of hilltops formed by the preservation of portions 

 of the drifts through the hardness of the basalt, which at one time 

 must have been a continuous sheet of lava. In the case of the 

 artesian wells of the West of Queensland (to which the President 

 had invited attention) little light had been thrown by the bores on 

 the depth of the superficial drifts, partly because the plant employed 

 did not take out cores. But he believed that, as a rule, there was 

 nothing above the Cretaceous rocks which carried the artesian water 

 except the debris of the shales decomposed in place. Some in- 

 formation regarding these wells might be of interest. In the last 

 17 years 202 miles of bores had been sunk, to depths varying up 

 to 5045 feet. 532 successful bores gave an annual outflow of 

 128,022,767,710 gallons. The temperature of one of the bores 

 was 196° Fahr. Such a number of flowing wells, even though they 

 were merely dotted over an enormous area, could not fail to have 

 mitigated to some extent the disastrous effects of the seven years' 

 drought through which the country had lately passed. It was 



