THE GREAT FROST OF 1890-91.
117
disturbances. The presence of Glacial gravel on the crest of the
Tiptree ridge points to its elevation during the Glacial period.
I have referred to the possibility in the future of collieries being
worked in Essex, but, though the undulations I have endeavoured to
portray necessarily affect the subjacent beds, this is not a suitable
occasion to discuss the question of the constitution of the ancient
basis upon which the Secondary rocks of S.E. England repose. I
will only say here that I hold Mr. Godwin Austen's views on the sub-
ject to have been a priori untenable, and to have been disproved by
every successive boring that has reached the Palaeozoic rocks in
the south-east counties ; and that, but for the glamour of possible
wealth in concealed coal, his speculations would have received but
little notice.
Few things can be clearer than that the Boulonnais and the
Warwickshire coal-fields, with their N.W. strike in common, are
better criteria for the general trend of the older rocks under Essex
than the Somersetshire and Belgian coal-fields, which are so much
more remote. That Coal-Measures exist, with a N.W.-S.E. strike,
under a great part of eastern England I have held as certain for more
than a dozen years, whilst every now and then proofs have been dis-
covered of older rocks to the westward in Hertfordshire, Middlesex
and Surrey. Harwich, with its Carboniferous rock of uncertain
horizon, and Dover, with its unquestioned Coal-Measures, are as yet the
only Carboniferous localities—and they lie between the North France
and Midland English coal-fields. I hope to live to see many a
colliery at work in Essex, but it must be in regions outside of the
great depressions I have traced, for these may be due to the deep-
seated causes, carrying down the Coal-Measures as well as the upper
strata.
THE GREAT FROST OF 1890-91.
IN a paper read before the. Royal Meteorological Society on February 18th,
Mr. C. Harding gave some details of the late prolonged frost, which are
interesting as supplementing the papers of Dr. Thresh and Mr. French in the
last number of the Essex Naturalist. The paper dealt with the whole
period of the frost from November 25th to January 22nd, and it was shown that
over nearly the whole of the south-east of England the mean temperature for the
fifty-nine days was more than 2 deg. below freezing point, while at seaside
stations on the coast of Kent, Sussex, and Hampshire, the mean was only 32 deg.