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VI.—British Association for the Advancement of Science, Bournemouth, 1919
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
Extract
Another direction in which the work of the Survey could with advantage be extended is in the execution of deep borings on carefully thought-out schemes by which a maximum of information could be obtained. Both in Holland and Germany borings have been carried out to discover the nature of the older rocks beneath the Secondary and Tertiary strata, and Professor Watts, in his Presidental Address to the Geological Society in 1912 (Proc. Geol. Soc., pp. lxxx–xc), has dwelt on the importance of exploring systematically the region beneath the wide spread of the younger rocks that covers such a great extent of the East and South of England. Professor Boulton, my predecessor in this Chair, has endorsed this appeal, but nothing has been done or is apparently likely to be done in this direction. It seems extraordinary that no co-ordinated effort should have been made to ascertain the character and potentiality of this almost unknown land that lies close beneath our feet and is the continuation of the older rocks of the west and north to which we owe so much of our mineral wealth. It is true that borings have been put down by private enterprise, but, being directed only by the hope of private gain and by rival interests, they have been carried out on no settled plan, and the results and sometimes the very existence of the borings have been kept secret. The natural consequences of this procedure have been the maximum of expense and the minimum of useful information.
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page 551 note 1 I have not space to deal here with the shallow borings in soft strata which have been so successfully conducted on the Flanders front during the War by Captain W. B. R. King, of the Geological Survey. Similar borings have been already carried out by the Survey on a limited scale, but in the light of the experience that has now been gained we may look for a widely extended use of the method both by private workers and by the Survey officers.
page 552 note 1 I have already referred to the economic importance of this area. The desirability of ascertaining its true geological structure is too obvious to need emphasis here.
page 552 note 2 The recent borings for mineral oil in the Carboniferous rocks of Derbyshire were put down largely by means of public funds, and such success as they have attained has been due to the fact that they were directed by expert geologists ; but there can be little doubt that, if they had been carried out as part of a carefully thought-out scheme of underground exploration wherever it was needed to elucidate the structure of the country, economies would have been effected and the sum-total of our knowledge even from the economic standpoint would have been far greater. It is a pity that these borings have been carried out by means of the percussion process. It is, however, usually employed in borings for oil—in America almost exclusively—and in war-time its greater speed was no doubt an important factor in the decision to resort to it.
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page 554 note 1 Even the number of skilled mechanics is quite insufficient, though their work is urgently needed. In the Geological Department provision is only made for two, and at present but one is actually at work.
page 555 note 1 [There is a very complete collection of the rocks of South Africa in the Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge.—Ed. Geol. Mag.]
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page 558 note 1 It is probable that the temperatures recorded in some lavas higher than the melting-point of copper, which is well over 1,200° C., are due to chemical reactions, such as the oxidation of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, ferrous oxide, and perhaps sulphur. See Day & Shepherd, Bull. Geol. Soc. Am., vol. xxiv, pp. 599–601, 1913Google Scholar.
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page 561 note 2 Ibid., pp. 467–8.
page 562 note 1 Cox, Abstracts of the Proceedings of the Geological Society of London, 1918, pp. 71–4.