Vol. 58. | A DEEP BORING AT LYME REGIS. QSEY 
gentlemen who had carried out this scheme. Unfortunately, the 
prospects of finding coal here were not good. The thickness of 
the Upper Keuper Beds was about what might have been expected ; 
and if the boring had been continued we should have learnt something 
about the Keuper Sandstones (Ottery Beds), and possibly even the 
Budleigh Salterton Pebble-Bed might have been proved. But sup- 
posing that the borehole had penetrated the entire Mesozoic column, 
what would the prospectors have found when they reached the 
Paleozoic floor? The Radstock coalfield was some 45 miles from 
Lyme in a northerly direction, with the Mendips intervening, and 
the Exeter beds some 30 miles to the westward. Hence it was. 
probable that the Culm-Measures of Devon were more likely to be 
found at Lyme than the Coal-Measures of Northern Somerset. 
Turning to the section on the screen, he commented on the 
increased thickness of the Rhetic as compared with the development 
at Pylle Hill (Bristol), where Edward Wilson had assigned 16 feet to 
the Rheetic as restricted by him. He also enquired what paleonto- 
logical evidence there was for placing the grey or tea-green ‘ marls’ 
in the Rhetic Series, contrary to the conclusions of that author. 
He furthermore criticized the use of the term ‘ marls,’ as applied to. 
the Keuper of this area. Most of the cores from that formation in 
the Dorchester Museum had been tested, and no carbonate of lime 
had been found. 
Mr. H. B. Woonwarp, replying on behalf of the Author, said 
that the fossils from the grey and tea-green marls of Watchet 
were the Microlestes found by Prof. Boyd Dawkins and Gervillia 
recorded by Mr. Etheridge. It would no doubt be a satisfaction to 
have further discoveries in these marls; but at Gold Cliff, in Mon- 
mouthshire, there was a bone-bed with Rheetic fish-remains in the 
Green Marl below the Black Shales. There and in South Wales 
Mr. Strahan had taken the base of the Black Shales as the lower 
limit of the Rhetic Beds, because it was the sole apparently- 
persistent plane of division. At Lyme Regis there were dark 
clayey bands in the Grey Marls, which foreshadowed the Black 
Shales; and there was no doubt that these marls formed passage-. 
beds between the Keuper and the Rheetic. 
