Geology Of England Research Articles

Geology in Great Britain

PART 1 of the “Summary of Progress of the Geological Survey of Great Britain” for 19331 contains - the usual annual reports of the Geological Survey Board i and of the director and gives particulars of routine \ work carried out during the year under review. As in the succeeding year, there was some slowing down of normal activities on account of the immense amount of additional work involved in preparation for the transfer of the collections to the new museum at South Kensington. Nevertheless, thirty-nine maps were issued, together with five memoirs, which, with one exception, have already been noticed in our columns (NATURE, 134, 782; 1934); the remaining one, the Merthyr Tydfil memoir7, is reviewed below. The old Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street closed its doors to the public at the end of 1933. Sir John Flett contributes an interesting outline of its history from its opening in the year of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (see also NATURE, 134, 129; 1934).

Problems of the Borderland of Archaeology and Geology in Britain: Presidential Address for 1936

To be the President of the Prehistoric Society is an honour that has a particular personal appeal to me. When the Society was founded in 1908, with a title that identified it with East Anglia, I was resident in Ipswich, the very place that was to become the Mecca of students of the Old Stone Age. My pride in being an early adherent of the Society is tinged with regret that I was not one of the small group of founder-members. Only one circumstance prevented me from so participating, and that was my impression that my close attachment to geology was not an appropriate qualification for membership. This is in itself a significant sidelight on the gap that then lay between the study of later geological history—the Pliocene and Pleistocene (in which I was especially interested)—and investigations relating to the traces of Early Man.In the quarter of a century that has elapsed since the founding of the Society, the gap between the two lines of approach has closed in a remarkable manner: geologists and archæologists now work side by side, and the effects of even the warmest arguments are merely transitory. The story of this interweaving of the sciences is now familiar to us all, and reference to some of the earlier phases of the rapprochement need only be incidental.

Geology in Great Britain

PART I of the “Summary of Progress of the Geological Survey of Great Britain” for 19311 contains the usual annual reports of the Geological Survey Board and of the Director and gives par ticulars of routine work carried out during the year under review. Fifty-four maps were issued, together with four English and two Scottish memoirs, all of which have already been noticed in our columns (NATURE, 131, 370-372; 1933). Part 22 contains a series of papers on subjects of special interest. The Carboniferous system receives particular attention, D. A. Wray dealing with the Yorkshire Coal Measures and S. W. Hester with the Millstone Grits of North Staffordshire, while Stanley Smith, R. Crookall and W. S. Bisat discuss palseontological problems. C. B. Wedd contributes notes on the Ordovician of Mont gomeryshire and an important study of Palaeozoic an 5 later tectonic structures between the Longmynd and the Berwyns. Three new species of Old Red Sandstone fishes are described by D. M. S. Watson. Petrology is represented by two highly interesting papers: one by Sir John Flett on the Stankards Sill, a teschenite-picrite intrusion in which differentiation was accomplished either before or during intrusion; the other by A. G. MacGregor and W. Q. Kennedy on the Morvern-Strontian ‘granite’, a complex of the appinite-lamprophyre suite followed by tonalites, granodiorites and biotite-granite.

Geology in Great Britain

THE “Summary of Progress” of the Geological Survey of Great Britain for 1930 has been issued in the three parts that have now become customary, the first being devoted to the annual reports of the Geological Survey Board and of the Director and to the routine work carried out during the year under review, while the others contain papers on subjects of special interest. Forty-four maps were published with seven English and three Scottish memoirs, some of which have already been noticed in our columns (NATURE, vol. 127, 574, April 11, 1931).

A Bibliography of the Tectonics of England and Wales

FOR more than twenty-five years the compiler of this bibliography has been deeply interested in the tectonic history of the British Isles: for the greater part of this time he has also been struck by the absence of any adequate and annotated treatment of the subject, since the appearance of the third edition of Jukes-Browne's Building of the British Isles, 1911. (The so-called 4th edition of this work, dated 1922, appears to be merely an unrevised reprint of the 3rd edition.) In 1929 this want was in part supplied by the publication of The Physiographical Evolution of Britain, by Dr. L. J. Wills. Even in this admirable work, however, the stress is on physiography rather than on tectonics, and many of the more important writings on this side of the subject are not referred to. In the Handbook of the Geology of Great Britain, which appeared in the same year, the exiguous section on “Morphology” includes no bibliography, while the whole scheme of treatment is in the main palaeontological, and little help on the tectonic aspect is to be obtained from the text of most of the sections. The present publication may in a sense be regarded as a supplement to that work.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF YORKSHIRE GEOLOGY, 1931

Anon.—The Coal Trade of 1930. Coll. Guard, Jan. 2nd, pp. 19–34 and Jan. 9th, pp. 67–71. Anon. Department of Scientific and Industrial Research. No. 18, H.M.S.O., Barnsley Seam Analyses. tom. cit., July 24th, pp. 282–283, and July 31st, pp. 370–371. Anon. Geological Literature added to the Geological Society’s Library during the year ending December 31st, 1930, pp. iv + 273. Anon. Abstracts of the Proceedings of the Geological Society of London. Session 1930–31, Nos. 1220–1235. London, pp. 116. Anon. Hubberholme and Littondale, Shibden Valley and Halifax. [Geology]. Haworth. Ramb. Circ., pp. 1–4. Anon. The Stones of English Cathedrals [York, Durham, Lincoln, etc.]. Quarry, April, p. 163. Anon. Quarrying of Stoke Stone. tom. cit., May, pp. 211–213. Anon. Geological Sections [Yorks. Nat. Union: Report of] Nat., Jan. P. 25. Anon. Yorkshire Geologists at Whitby. tom. cit., Nov., pp. 345–346. Anon. A survey of the Mineral Position of the British Empire. pp. 121. See also Nature, June 20th, p. 949. Anon. Geology in Great Britain. Nature, April 11th, pp. 574–575. Anon. Prehistoric Society of East Anglia [Report]. tom. cit., November 21st, pp. 879–880. Anon. Discussion of the First Progress Report of the Committee of the Midland Institute of Mining Engineers on the Control of Roof and Support of Mine Workings: “The Beeston Seam of West Yorkshire.” Trans. Inst. Min. Eng., January, pp. 280–283. Anon. Skipton Waterworks. Water. March, pp. 103–105. Anon. Halifax Corporation Waterworks, tom. cit., April, pp.

IX.—Notes on Lower Old Red Sandstone Plants from Callander, Perthshire

Plant-remains have long been known to occur at a horizon near the top of the Lower Old Red Sandstone of Perthshire, far above the volcanic horizon represented in the Ochil Hills. Evans, in the Handbook of the Geology of Great Britain (1929), speaks of these Perthshire plants as occurring “near the summit of the Strathmore Sandstones”; but it is as well to remember that Evans' definition of Strathmore Sandstones is very wide, including all “beds above the Cairnconnan Grits” of Forfar. Hickling (1908) and Campbell (1913) refer to the Strathmore Beds or Group in a much more restricted sense. For them the term is a synonym for Edzell Shales, the uppermost of four divisions united by Evans as Strathmore Sandstones. On account of this uncertainty we prefer, for the present, not to employ the term Strathmore with any stratigraphical significance.

Geology in Great Britain

THE “Summary of Progress” of the Geological Survey of Great Britain for 1929 is issued in three parts, of which the first is devoted to an account of the routine work during the year under review, while the others contain papers on subjects of special interest. Part 11 embodies the annual reports of the Geological Survey Board and of the Director. Sixty-six maps were published during 1929, with eight memoirs, which, with the exception of that dealing with Moreton in Marsh (see below), have already been noticed in our columns (NATURE, Aug. 16, 1930, p. 258). The memoirs in the press at the close of the year have since appeared and are reviewed below.

Geology in Great Britain

THE welcome innovation introduced last year of issuing the “Summary of Progress” of the Geological Survey in two parts is continued, one part being devoted to an account of the routine work of the year, while the other serves as a medium for the publication of a series of papers on subjects of special interest. Students are thus enabled to purchase at a reduced price the second part of the “Summary” without having to pay for the section dealing with administrative matters. Part I.1 contains the annual report of the Geological Survey Board and of the Director. Seventy-five maps were published during 1928, together with fourteen memoirs, most of which have already been noticed in our columns (NATUBE, Aug. 10, 1929). The reports of the district geologists contain many records of interest. Fieldwork was largely concentrated on the revision of the coalfields, but in Shropshire the Longmynd has been invaded afresh and a provisional classification of some of its puzzling formations is offered, while in the Lake District the relations of the Skiddaw slates, the Borrowdale volcanic series and the Carrook Fell complex are being actively attacked. The new survey of the Orkneys has yielded a fine suite of fossil fishes and plants from the Old Red Sandstone. On the petrological side, it is announced that the Tertiary igneous rocks of Ardnamurehan exemplify in a most striking way the phenomena of ring-dyke intrusion and present many important facts bearing on mag-matic differentiation. Hybridisation is thought to be responsible for the reproduction of the tonalitic and monzonitic types of the central complex. Publication of full details is promised in the near future. An interesting account is given of the successful experiences of the geophysical party.

Geology in Great Britain

THE Summary of Progress for the year 1927 of the Geological Survey of Great Britain appears in two parts. Part I.1 contains the Annual Report of the Geological Survey Board and of the Director. Eighty maps were published during the year, together with a number of memoirs, most of which have been already noticed in our columns (NATURE, Feb. 11, 1928). Among the new developments are the inception of a programme of geophysical work with the Eötvös balance; the authorisation of the sale of photographic copies of six-inch manuscript maps; and the opening out of a new district, the Orkney Islands. The volume also includes the field reports of the district geologists; an account of the petrology of the Cheviot rocks by Dr. H. H. Thomas; and details of nineteen new chemical analyses of rocks.

Geology in Great Britain

Geology in Great Britain

William Smith: His Maps and Memoirs

MR. SHEPPARD has spared no pains in making bibliography attractive. He has reproduced by photography original title-pages and maps; he has added portraits, and views of William Smith's homes at Midford and at Harkness—the latter from a good oil-painting. By quoting characteristic passages, including “The Geology of England: Mr. Wm. Smith's Claims,” published in 1817, he has given a very interesting and effective picture of the man. The rarity of Smith's original works—only 250 copies seem to have been printed of the four parts of “Strata identified by Organized Fossils”-has rendered Mr. Sheppard's collation of various copies a labour of time as well as of pious erudition. The result is a book that will be welcomed in every scientific library. Smith's sections across various English districts are here given in a reduced form, and we are grateful to the Yorkshire Geological Society for undertaking this liberality of illustration when Mr. Sheppard's memoir first appeared in its Proceedings. As the author points out, Messrs. Cruchley of London, in quite recent years, sold road-maps of English counties reproduced from John Cary's plates (though of course with the addition of railways), and on some at least of these William Smith's geological data still appeared. If the original plates exist, it might be possible to reconstruct for libraries Smith's “Geological Atlas,” much as it was issued between 1819 and 1824. William Smith: His Maps and Memoirs. T. Sheppard By. Pp. iii + 75–253 + plates. (Hull: A. Brown and Sons, Ltd., 1920.) Price 7s. 6d.

XIV. The Permian and Triassic Rocks of Arran

1. The Ages Assigned to the Upper Red Rocks of Arran. Most of the southern part of Arran consists of a series of red rocks which have been assigned at various times to each of the geological Systems, from the Devonian to the Trias. Sedgwick and Murchison, in 1829, referred them ( 1829 , pp. 32, 33, and section, pl. 3) to the New Red Sandstone. Sir Andrew Ramsay, in 1841 (p. 77), adopted the same conclusion for most of the formation, though he referred ( e.g. , section 2, opp. p. viii.) a considerable part to the Carboniferous. Bryce, in 1859 (p. 70), transferred the whole group to the Carboniferous, as he held that they were interstratified with Carboniferous Limestones, and he expressed himself confident that “the distinguished geologists” who had referred these beds to the New Red Sandstone “will be the first to agree to this view.” In the fourth edition of his Geology of Arran ( 1872 , p. 15) he provisionally identified them with the Calciferous Sandstones, and therefore placed them at the base of the Carboniferous. This view was shown to be impossible for the Red Sandstones at the Cock of Arran when, in 1874, Wünsch and Thomson ( 1877 ) found fossiliferous Carboniferous pebbles in them, and referred the beds to the Lower Permian. They are shown as Carboniferous by Goodchild in the map accompanying H. B. Woodward's Geology of England and Wales ( 1887 , 2nd edition). Subsequently Sir Archibald Geikie ( 1892 and 1893 , p. 801) referred these red rocks This 250-word extract was created in the absence of an abstract

Geology of the British Isles

AMONG the later memoirs of the Geological Survey of Great Britain, for which Mr. T. Fisher Unwin is wholesale agent, is that accompanying Sheet 142 of the 1-inch map, on “The Geology of the Melton Mowbray District and South-east Nottinghamshire,” by Messrs. Lamplugh, Gibson, Wedd, Sherlock, and Smith (price 2s. 3d.). The map (price 1s. 6d.) is a good one for showing the irregular distribution of boulder-clay across the ridge of Middle Lias, and its cessation in the Vale of Belvoir. Rhætic beds are recognised above the “tea-green marls” of the Keuper in the north and west. In the memoir it is pointed out that the Vale of Belvoir must have lain in the glaciated region, but was an area of stripping rather than of accumulation. Melton Mowbray probably stands over a concealed coalfield, which has been proved by borings to the north-west, and which may extend far to the south-east.

Indian Mineral Resources

IN a recent article in an American journal, the editor remarked that “geology in Britain scorns the study of ore deposits, and it is deemed gentlemanly to investigate molluscs rather than ores, scenery rather than outcrops.” Such a reproach would never have been just, though naturally certain branches of economic geology cannot be studied in this country through lack of necessary material, and Sir T. H. Holland's instructive “Sketch of the Mineral Resources of India” shows the increasing recognition by British geologists of the interesting problems of economic geology. This report is a concise summary of the mineral resources of India, and the use now made of them.

On the Morte Slates, and Associated Beds, in North Devon and West Somerset.—Part I

Hitherto the Morte Slates have received but scant attention from geologists, owing to the fact that in all text–books, and in geological papers on North Devon, they have always been referred to as unfossiliferous; and all that was known with regard to them up to the year 1887 is well summarized in the following paragraph taken from the second edition of Mr. H. B. Woodward's well–known work,‘The Geology of England and Wales’ p. 127:—‘This division, termed the Morte Slates by the Rev. D. Williams, derives its name from Morte Point, on the north–west coast of Devon. The term Mortehoe Group, from the village of that name, was used by John Phillips. The Morte Slates, or “grey slates,” comprise pale greenish–grey and silvery grey glossy slates, much veined with quartz, and having a thickness estimated at from 3000 to 4000 feet. No fossils have been found; nor have any limestone–bands been recognized in them. The beds rest on the Ilfracombe Beds at Lee Bay, and the subdivisions which can be traced are noted by Mr. Etheridge (in ascending order) as the Lee, Rockham Bay, and Morthoe Beds. The Morte Slates pass downwards into the Ilfracombe Beds, and in Mr. Ussher's opinion they are simply an upper unfossiliferous portion of this lower division, since it is impossible to fix any definite boundary between them. Simonsbath is situated in the valley of the Barle, between the Ilfracombe and Morte Beds.Eastwards they extend to near Wiveliscombe, where they are exposed at the Oakhampton Slate

II.—Papers and Notes on The Glacial Geology Of Great Britain and Ireland. By The Late Henry Carvill Lewis, M.A., F.G.S.; Professor of Mineralogy in the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and Professor of Geology in Haverford College, U.S.A. Edited from his unpublished MSS., with an Introduction by Henry W. Crosskey, LL.D., F.G.S. (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.

II.—Papers and Notes on The Glacial Geology Of Great Britain and Ireland. By The Late Henry Carvill Lewis, M.A., F.G.S.; Professor of Mineralogy in the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and Professor of Geology in Haverford College, U.S.A. Edited from his unpublished MSS., with an Introduction by Henry W. Crosskey, LL.D., F.G.S. (London and New York: Longmans, Green, and Co.

A Theory of the Glacial Deposits

THEY are wrong who think that little is left in England for a geologist to discover or do. Not only are there gaps to be filled up, and doubtful points to be made certain, but even whole fields remain where if labourers have been at work they have as yet reaped little fruit. Especially may an Alexander, sighing for a fresh world, be invited to turn his attention to what are called the glacial deposits. In area they extend over the greater part of the British Isles; in variety they far exceed the Archaeans; in difference of opinion about them they would also exceed Archaeans, if such an excess be possible. They have difficulties peculiarly their own. It is well said by the editor of this volume that in glacial geology not merely the interpretation of facts is debated, but there is dispute as to what the facts are themselves. Geologists of repute go to the same section, see the same phenomena, and describe them in contradictory terms. Mr. Clement Reid surveys the Cromer cliffs, and figures chalk masses ploughed up by glaciers. Mr. Mellard Reade examines the same cliffs, and sketches chalk masses dropped down by ice-floes. The questions connected with these deposits have been raised on the hills of Nicaragua and the banks of the Amazon. As their range of space, so their range of time: glacial phenomena have been described from the Permian epoch, and the Carboniferous. They seem to claim all time and all space as their province. Papers and Notes on the Glacial Geology of Great Britain and Ireland. By the late Henry Carvill Lewis (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1894.)

II.—On the Microscopic Structure of the Jurassic Pisolite

The specimens of pisolite which I have examined were obtained from two horizons, namely, the Coralline Oolite and base of the Inferior Oolite near Cheltenham. The pisolites are well known and have frequently been referred to by authors as fine types of oolitic granules, and in proof of this I may quote from Mr. H. B. Woodward's last edition of his Geology of England and Wales. Speaking of oolite granules the author says (p. 281), “ When these particles approach the size of a pea or bean, the rock is termed Pisolite, Pisolitic Limestone, or Pea-grit.”

I.—The Geology of England and Wales. By Horace B. Woodward, F.G.S., of the Geological Survey of England and Wales. Second Edition, pp. 670, with Geological Map and 103 Illustrations. (London: George Philip & Son, 1887.)

I.—The Geology of England and Wales. By Horace B. Woodward, F.G.S., of the Geological Survey of England and Wales. Second Edition, pp. 670, with Geological Map and 103 Illustrations. (London: George Philip & Son, 1887.) - Volume 4 Issue 7