SESSION 1910-1911. 
lxxi 
carried:—“ That the Corresponding Societies Committee consider 
the advisability of inviting the societies represented at the 
Conference of Delegates to communicate with the Treasury and 
with their Members of Parliament with a view to reverting to the 
old prices of the Geological Survey maps.” 
Field Meeting, 29th April, 1911. 
BOURNE END AND BERKHAMSTED. 
This meeting was arranged to be held in conjunction with the 
Geologists’ Association in view of the probability, at the time of 
arranging it, that the Hertfordshire Bourne would flow. 
The valley was visited by the writer on the 3rd of March, 
when it was seen that pools, not due to surface-water, were being 
formed at its lower end, and a gravel-pit about a mile up it was 
about half full of water, which it was ascertained on inquiry was 
rising at the time. The mean rainfall for the year 1910 at the 
three nearest rainfall stations (Berkhamsted, Hemel Hempstead, 
andApsleyMills), was about 33 inches, which it was thought might 
suffice to cause the stream to flow, and a programme for the 
present meeting was therefore drawn up and sent to the Excursion 
Secretary of the Geologists’ Association on the 4th of March, as 
requested by him. On a subsequent visit it was ascertained that 
the water reached its highest point about the 10th of March, 
since which date it gradually sank, not having caused the Bourne 
to flow, the reason most probably being the unusually small 
rainfall of the first two or three months in the year. 
Members of the two societies assembled at Boxmoor Station 
and walked to Bourne End, part of the way being across meadows 
on the alluvial flat formed by the River Bulbourne. At this 
hamlet a dry culvert under the high road was pointed out, and 
it was stated that the volume of water coming down the valley 
of the Bourne was known to have been so great that the culvert 
could not take it all and it had flooded the road. 
From Bourne End the valley was ascended nearly to Bottom 
Farm, a private road being taken by permission of Mr. R. A. 
Cooper, M.P., and the gravel-pit above-mentioned was found 
still to have a considerable depth of water in it. Here the 
present writer gave an account of our records of the flowing of 
the Bourne, and of the cause of its flowing^ 
Before leaving the pit the gravel was examined, and was 
found to consist mostly of flints from the Chalk, much broken 
but only slightly water-worn, with a very small proportion of 
round or roundish flint-pebbles, characteristic features of the 
gravel of an intermittent stream on the Chalk formation. 
The hill was then crossed to Berkhamsted, and from near its 
summit a subsidiary valley, down which water now never flows, 
* This had been published in extenso in the ‘ South-Eastern Naturalist ’ 
for 1911 (pp. 10-19), with a map of the Bourne Valley, views, and tables. 
