THE ESSEX FIELD CLUB. 263
No other members having been proposed for any office, the above gentlemen
stood elected as Members of the Council and Officers for the year 1904 and were
so declared by the Chairman.
The Hon. Secretary submitted the account of the Tea Fund for the session
1903-4.
Mr. J. Avery proposed a vole of thanks to the Officers. This was seconded
by Mr. Reader and adopted.
The President then delivered his Annual Address, in which after some general
matters relating to the Club he treated of "The Natural History of Pyrites and
Gypsum, the chief minerals of Essex." [The address will be printed in full in a
future part of the E.N.]
Mr. David Howard said that they would all thank their President for his
most interesting and practically useful paper. Mr. Rudler had treated a most
difficult subject in a most charming style.
Mr. T. V. Holmes warmly seconded the vote of thanks, which was carried
amid applause.
Some remarks on the address were made by Mr. T. S. Dymond, F.C.S.
Mr. Dymond's observations will probably be embodied in a paper to be read to
be read to the Club.
The President briefly thanked the members tor their appreciation of his efforts.
THE 230th ORDINARY MEETING.
This meeting was held in connection with the Annual Meeting, for the
confirmation of the minutes of the meeting on February 27th last, and for other
business. The President in the Chair.
Chislehurst Caves.—Mr. T. V. Holmes exhibited some photographs
showing the interior of the Chislehurst Caves, which have recently been lighted
up, and are now open to public inspection. They were (he said) in the hillside
at the back of the Bickley Arms Hotel, and are about quarter of a mile from the
Chislehurst Railway Station. Similar workings in chalk were once visible a
little northward, at the western end of Camden Park, but are now closed to
inspection, buildings having been erected in front of them. The valley through
which the railway runs at Chislehurst, south of the tunnel, shows the chalk at the
base of the hillside eastward. Above it are the Thanet Sand, Woolwich Beds,
and Blackheath Pebble Beds. Except at this spot there is no chalk at the
surface nearer than Lewisham northward, and south of Orpington, in the opposite
direction. It has been worked at Chislehurst by means of galleries run
horizontally into the hillside for some hundreds of yards. As the top of
the chalk is but very slightly above the bottom of the valley, and as it appears at
the surface only through the existence of a slight anticlinal fold in the strata, it is
not surprising that the workers have here and there left too thin a roof
of chalk, and have thereby caused a downfall of the overlying Thanet
Sand. These falls of sand appear as conical mounds filling the gallery
from roof to floor, and have necessarily caused the excavators to turn
aside and alter the direction of the galleries near them, thereby
introducing an apparent complexity. But there appeared to him (from
what he had seen) to be no evidence of the existence of any vertical shafts
where these falls occurred, or of any intersection of deneholes at their base. Then