THE MIDDLE LIAS OF NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. 
57 
Lias, at a spot about 1 mile N.E. from the centre of the 
town, near the Kettering Load. Although the boring added 
much valuable information to the science of Geology, as is 
well known, it entirely failed in its object. After passing 
through 738 feet of the Lias (Upper Middle, and Lower), 
some abnormal sandstones, and conglomerates, occupying 
sixty-seven feet six inches, were passed through, and then 
twenty-five feet of Carboniferous dolomite, and then Lower 
Carboniferous limestone and shales for a depth of twenty 
feet six inches, the total depth being 851 feet. The Trias, 
Permian, and Coal Measures were absent, though it was pretty 
evident the Upper Trias existed not far away, on account of 
the considerable influx of salt water below 800 feet. Mr. 
H. J. Eunson says, in the paper from which most of these 
particulars are taken, that, without doubt, the saline water 
came from the beds above the dolomite. 
This was a perfectly legitimate and well-conducted trial, 
and I thought conclusively settled the matter of a deep- 
seated water supply for Northampton ; therefore, when the 
Gayton boring was broached, and before the work commenced, 
at my own request I was given the opportunity of explaining 
to the engineer of the Company the reasons why I felt sure 
the undertaking must fail, at the same time to suggest the 
alternative scheme, to be explained later on. 
It has been well known for a long time that in the South 
Midland Counties of England a series of ridges or folds of 
the older Palaeozoic rocks extended in an east and west 
direction across the country, and even into Belgium, and at 
no very great depth beneath the surface, and that in 
most cases these rocks were capped by the cretaceous or 
newer formations entirely cutting out the lower Mesozoic 
formations towards the east, and the lowest of them towards 
the west.* 
As I understood it at the time, the idea in going to 
Gayton, five miles south-west of Northampton, was to 
endeavour to get at the Trias between the ridges of these old 
Palaeozoic ranges of hills, or on the flanks of them, but as I 
pointed out at the interview referred to, it was possible they 
might get lower beds than they did at Northampton, but 
still they would be only the upper beds of the Trias, because 
the lower ones would be those most eliminated by deposition 
in an area which had to sink considerably before any deposit 
* More recent investigations show that “ Oolitic ” might be 
substituted for “ Cretaceous.” See “ Nature and Relations of the 
Jurassic Deposits which underlie London, &c. ; ” by Prof. J. W. Judd, 
Q.J.G.S., November. 1884. 
