134 
PEE-CARBONIFEROUS FLOOR OF THE MIDLANDS. 
Thanks to the modern appliances by which such borings are 
executed, depths of from 800 to 2,000 feet have been readily 
reached ; with the result that old rocks have been pierced at 
several points, and specimens in the form of “cores” 
brought to the surface. 
The preceding list includes borings which have been made 
along a line extending nearly due north and south, from 
Scarle in Lincolnshire to Netherfield near Brighton. It 
shows in each case:—(1.) The lowest Mesozoic formation 
found ; (2.) The Palaeozoic formation upon which this 
Mesozoic rock rested (in those cases where the Palaeozoic 
rocks were reached); (3.) the extreme depth to which the 
bore-liole descended; and (4.) the depth of the old Palaeozoic 
surface below the present sea-level. Detailed sections of 
several of these deep borings have been already given by me 
in the pages of the “Midland Naturalist.” # 
Commencing on the south this chain of borings revealed 
an unexpected thickness of Oolitic strata below Sussex. 
The Caterham boring disappointed those who hoped to 
obtain a water-supply for London from the Lower Greensand , 
which only a few miles further south is of considerable 
thickness. At Caterham this bed is only twenty feet thick, 
showing that we are quite close to its old shore-line, of which 
there are indications at its outcrop (round Sevenoaksl in 
the shape of numerous pebbles of quartzite and other hard 
rocks. 
The Richmond boring showed below the Gault eighty- 
seven feet only of Oolitic strata, resting on red rocks (probably 
Triassic), in which the boring terminated. Under London 
only one boring has actually reached the Palaeozoic axis, viz., 
that at Meux’s Brewery in the Tottenham Court Road, where 
red and green Upper Devonian Shales were found to contain 
fossils of types such as occur in the Eifel district —Spirifera 
YerneuUii for instance. Mr. Wliitakerf has pointed out that 
this strongly bears against the theory that the red beds at 
the bottom of the Kentish Town and the Crossness borings 
can he Old Red Sandstone, since in no known locality are the 
two types—the Devonian and the Old Red—found in such 
close proximity. 
At Turnford the Gault rested upon purple Devonian Shales, 
and at Ware upon Upper Silurian (Wenlock) Shales. The 
four Northampton borings clearly proved the Trias there to 
* Midland Naturalist, Yol. III., p. 188. 
f Quarterly Journal Geological Society, Yol. XL., p. 724. Geology 
of London, p. 21. 
