iv 



PEEFACE. 



my best efforts will always be freely devoted to the interest of the 

 readers and subscribers to this Magazine, from whom, so far as 

 they are personally known to me, I continue to receive encourage- 

 ment and support. 



I would add here an earnest appeal to country collectors and pro- 

 vincial investigators to send notes of their doings aud of the occur- 

 rences in their respective districts : not necessarily for publication, 

 but to put me in possession of the means of securing a most valuable 

 amount of information for the advance of science, which now is never 

 brought before the world, and which passes resultlessly away into 

 oblivion. When recently at Tynemouth, I observed extensive sink- 

 ings into an unusually interesting mass of boulder-drift, in the con- 

 struction of a new powder magazine for the fort on the cliff within 

 the fine old priory walls. The sections presented were in both north- 

 and-south and east-and-w r est directions, the drifted materials con- 

 sisting variously of sand, clay, and gravel, all containing flints and 

 boulders of limestone, and other rocks ; some, scratched and scored. 

 The gravels commingled with runs of sand and intercalations of 

 clay, presenting, notwithstanding their intricacy of commingling, 

 evidences of the direction of drifting, not shown in the boulder-clay 

 exposed along the Durham coast. My stay there was extremely 

 limited, yet, although much engaged upon other matters, I found 

 time to make some very rough sketches in my note-book, and to 

 bring away my pockets full of small specimens of as many different 

 boulders as I could. Still, what I did was not sufficient to enable 

 me to give such an account of this remarkable cutting as it deserves ; 

 and as no trace of its existence is, as far as I am aware, shown on 

 the face of the cliff (except, it may be, obscurely on the river side, 

 as far as I could judge from a casual look while walking along the 

 new jetty), there is, perhaps, little chance of such an opportunity 

 for its examination occurring again. If, however, I had been ac- 

 quainted with any geologist resident in the place, or had any one 



