BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING AT DOVER. 
107 
called it the lock and key of England, and ended by saying that 
his hearers had not come to listen to the rumblings of a nearly 
extinct volcano, and so he would say no more. 
Sir Michael’s address has already been read by, I was going to 
say most people, and I will not trouble you with any of it except 
to remark that 1 thought he made one or two good hits, in one 
where ho called science organised common-sense, and in another 
when he said, the very perfectness of the present implements of war 
make for peace. 
On the Thursday morning I attended the geological section, 
under the presidentship of Sir Archibald Geikie, when Professor 
W. Boyd Dawkins read a paper on “The New Coal Borings in 
Kent,” which was illustrated by very complete diagrams. The 
substance of what ho said was, 1 think, that at Dover commencing 
in the lower chalk, after about 1,300 feet, they came to the coal 
measures, of which they had already penetrated 700 feet, passing 
through in that distance various seams of coal of an aggregate 
thickness of 13 feet, but of which only two or three are of workable 
thickness, tho thickest being but 2 \ feet, the whole of the workable 
coal being of “ good blazing quality,” which, I take it, means that 
it is not very good. Of course, tho hope is that the better and 
thicker scams are below, and that they will soon be reached. 
From the Professor’s paper one would conclude that the success 
of coal-mining in Kent is a certainty ; but, alas! when one enquired 
as to the value of the shares in the several undertakings for the 
finding of coal in Kent, they seemed to tell a very different tale. 
I think, however, that the Professor made it clear that the coal-field, 
of whatever quality it may prove to be, will not be a very large 
one, and that it will not extend at all to the west of the railway 
line from Folkestone to Ashford and Maidstone — one reason, among 
many others, being, that at Tunbridge Wells the coal measures have 
been proved to be absent. 
On the Thursday afternoon I attended the first of the Conferences 
of Delegates of Corresponding Societies, as your representative. We 
had a most witty and interesting paper by the Chairman, the 
lxev. T. R R Stebbings, F.RS., on “Underground Fauna,” in 
which he described the various wonderful things that come under 
this definition in foreign countries, including those extraordinary 
blind fishes in America. But it seems there is not much hope of 
finding much besides the Well-Shrimps in this county that properly 
