XVIII. 
LIST OF WORKS OK THE GEOLOGY OF HERTFORDSHIRE, 
1874-83. 
By Jomr Hopkixsox, E.L.S., F.G.S., etc. 
Read at Hertford , 19 th February , 1885. 
In’ the first volume of the ‘ Transactions ’ of our Society * is 
a list, compiled by Mr. W. Whitaker, of works on the geology of 
Hertfordshire to the end of the year 1873. The following is a 
supplementary list of books and memoirs treating of the geology 
of our county, or referring more or less to it, which have been 
published during the first decade which has since elapsed.f A 
considerable number of these consist of memoirs which have 
appeared in our own ‘ Transactions,’ and I have included the 
reports of about twenty of our Field Meetings at which informa¬ 
tion on local geology has been imparted. 
In some of our county histories, not referred to in the former 
list, there is an occasional reference to geological phenomena (soils, 
mineral springs, etc.). The earlier of these only are of interest 
as illustrations of the crude state of geological knowledge at the 
period at which they were written, our topographical and 
historical writers having devoted very little attention to’ the geology 
of our county. 
I have not included in the list Salmon’s 1 History of Hertford¬ 
shire ’ (1728). After saying that “ The county is to be considered 
both in its natural and civil state; the Earth and its Inhabitants,” 
he merely says of “ the Earth ” (p. 1): “ The Soil is none of the 
fruitfullest .... The Arable hath generally too much Gravel or 
too much Clay.” And, except in recommending “ St. Eoyne 
where the Earth is Chalky,” I think the only other remark bearing 
on the geology of the county which he makes is in his account of 
Moor Park, the present seat of Lord Ebury, in which he says, in 
referring to alterations to “ More House” (p. 110): “ in digging 
were found Veins of Sea Sand with Musscles in it.” Clutterbuck 
is our first historian who adds materially to our knowledge of the 
geology of the county. In the first volume of his 1 History ’ (1815) 
he gives a brief account of the Totternhoe Stone and of the Hertford¬ 
shire conglomerate, the first notice of the latter, I believe, except 
the curious account given in a work dated 1756, relating to the 
Natural History of Hertfordshire, as quoted in Crawley’s ‘ Guide 
to Hertfordshire’ (1880). Crawley does not give the title of the 
work nor the author’s name, but the following is the quotation 
(p. 9 of Introduction): “The surface of every ploughed field is 
covered with innumerable small Stones of .the flinty kind generally, 
* ‘ Trans. Watford Nat. Hist. Soc.,’ Vol. I, part 3, p. 78.—1876. 
f I am indebted to Mr. Whitaker and to Mr. W. Topley for valuable assist¬ 
ance in the compilation of this list, they having made it more complete by the 
addition of twelve memoirs which I had overlooked. I shall he glad to be 
informed of any omissions there may still be in it. 
