VI.—British Association for the Advancement of Science, Bournemouth, 1919

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.