Notes and Comments. 



3 



coast line. The cost of scheme at £32^ per groyne (or 

 ;^3,40o per mile of coast), would be ;^iio, 160; the cost of (b) 

 being- £ig per yard, ;^33,440 per mile, or 136,960 in all; 

 the total cost of the work therefore would be 2/^^,1 20. We 

 are informed by Mr. Matthews that ' the value of the land is 

 only one-third of what it would cost to protect it by means of 

 gfroynes, which are only a partial remedy.' He also states ' the 

 question naturally arises, ' who should bear the cost of these 

 extensive coast-protection works ' ? ' Just so — that's the diffi- 

 culty ! If it were not for some such trifle the work might have 

 been carried out long ago, and in place of our picturesque cliffs 

 we might have had one long, straight, monotonous sea-wall, 

 relieved here and there by band-stands and hot-pea and ice- 

 cream stalls ! Undoubtedly, however, the erosion of our coast 

 is a serious matter, though not so serious as the cost of 

 protecting it. There will still be some work for the Yorkshire 

 Coast Erosion Committee for years to come. 



LANCASHIRE BORINGS. 



Mr. T. Mellard Reade favours us with a reprint of his paper 

 ' On some Borings at Altcar made by the Lancashire and York- 

 shire Railway Company.' The author considers that the bores 

 ' have supplied a most interesting confirmation of the accuracy 

 of his geological map and sections, published by the [Liverpool 

 Geological] Society in 1872, and proves beyond cavil that the 

 whole of the beds underlying the Superior Peat and forest-bed 

 are marine or estuarine.' If this is so, the borings are indeed 

 important. Another conclusion arrived at in the same paper is 

 that 'the pre- and post-glacial deposits of this neighbourhood 

 constitute a most interesting geological record of frequent 

 vertical oscillations of the land, which may fairly be described 

 as pulsations of the mother earth.' One fails to find any 

 reference to the action of ice in the formation of the superficial 

 deposits of the district, unless the term ' glacio-marine ' comes 

 under that category. Mr. Reade's paper occupies eleven 

 pages, eight of which are filled by the harmless but apparently 

 necessary 'List of Foraminifera ' by Mr. J. Wright. As we 

 have previously pointed out the foraminifera no more prove the 

 marine origin of the glacial beds than do the fragments of 

 basalt, etc., found in the same deposits, prove that the drift was 

 formed by a volcanic eruption. 



1905 January 2. 



