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 
tliey 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 and 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-west 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 
