316 
REPORT OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 
moderate amount of gypsum in tlie water from deep wells 
sunk tlirougli tlie Red Marls is found to be of great value in 
brewing operations. 
The action of a fault when it brings a thick bed of 
impervious material like clay or marl side by side with a 
porous sandy stratum—the sandy beds dipping towards the 
line of fault—is strikingly shown both at- Birmingham and 
Stourbridge. In Birmingham there is any quantity of water 
to be had from the Sandstones and Pebble Beds right up to 
the line of fault. The Artesian well, about 200 feet deep, in 
Digbeth, must be within a few yards of the fault-line, and the 
water obtained is used in the manufacture of mineral waters, 
and is so highly prized that it may be frequently seen conveyed 
in a large barrel on wheels to various establishments in the 
town. 
At Stourbridge exactly the same thing happens. A north 
and south fault brings Permian Marls on a level with the 
Bunter Pebble Beds and Keuper Sandstones, the latter 
dipping towards the Marls. The water is banked up by the 
Marls and yields an unlimited supply to the wells of the 
Stourbridge Water Company, which lie just on the right (west) 
side of the line of fault. 
The Railway Company occupies the land on the marly side 
of the fault, and in years gone by they sank well after well 
in the marls in vain search for water, and the officials were 
much chagrined and surprised at its absence, seeing that any 
quantity of the precious fluid was being pumped up within a 
few yards of their land ! 
REPORT OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING, 
1886.* 
BY W. HILLHOUSE, M.A., F.L.S. 
(Delegate to the Conference of Corresponding Societies.) 
[abstract.] 
Officially, this report refers only to such matters as came 
under my cognisance as your delegate to the Conference of 
Corresponding Societies held in connection with the meeting 
of the British Association, but I have extended it so far as to 
endeavour to bring together all those matters connected with 
the recent meeting in which this society or its members were 
directly concerned. It may thus serve as a convenient record 
* Transactions of the Birmingham Natural History and Micro¬ 
scopical Society. 
