Page:EB1922 - Volume 31.djvu/250

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216
GEORGE V.

by E. Greenly (Geol. Sum. Gt. Britain, Geology of Anglesey, 1919) support and even amplify the view put forward by A. Jukes-Browne in the 3rd edition of his Building of the British Isles. Interesting Cre- taceous relics are also recorded from the Isle of Arran. The revised official memoirs and maps of the South Wales coal-field and of the Edinburgh and Glasgow districts are welcome from both a scientific and an industrial point of view. In Ayrshire, shales of Millstone Grit age have been found to be rich in aluminium hydroxide, and thus to indicate a climate in Britain in Carboniferous times capable of " laterising " the surface. The Yorks. coal-field has been traced east- ward and on into Notts, under its Permian Mesozoic cover, and it is estimated (W. Gibson, Geol. Sum. Memoir, 1913) that 5,000 ft. of Upper Carboniferous strata were removed from the area N.E. of Leeds before the Permian strata were laid down. The Bovey Tracey lignite beds have been investigated by C. and E. Reed (1910), and are held, in agreement with Heer, to be of Upper Oligocene age. The interbasaltic plant-beds of the county of Antrim are probably Oli- gocene rather than Eocene. The laterites and bauxites associated with them have been described in a recent memoir of the Geological Survey of Ireland, and subsequent work W. of Lough Neagh indicates that the "Lough Neagh Clays," now proved to be 1,100 ft. in thick- ness, may have, after all, to be removed from the Pliocene and in- cluded in the interbasaltic series. The earlier Pleistocene gravels of the S. of England have been correlated with phases of the glacial epoch, and have received renewed attention from the discussions on eoliths and from the discovery of Eoanthropus Dawsoni at Piltdown, N. of Lewes, in 1911-2. S. H. Warren's eolithic flints from beneath the Lower Eocene in Essex (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., 1921, vol. 66, p. 238) dealt a sudden blow at many examples relied on.

On the borderlands of Holland, Belgium, and Germany consider- able coal-fields have been traced by means of borings, several of which were carried by the Netherlands Government to a depth of over 1 ,000 metres in N. Limburg. Borings for lignite in Oligocene strata N. of Mulhouse in Alsace led to the discovery of important deposits of sylvine, which were developed for agricultural purposes in 1909, and will now supply France with an important mineral asset.

Under the auspices of the Geologische Reichsanstalt (now Staats- anstalt) of Vienna, considerable additions have been made to our knowledge of the Cretaceous as well as the older strata of Bohemia. The " red gneiss" of the Sudetic and Eisengebirge regions, formerly regarded as an Archaean floor, has been shown to be intrusive and of Upper Devonian or Carboniferous age. O. Ampferer and W. Ham- mer have published a detailed geological section of the Eastern Alps from Algau to the Lago di Garda (Jahrbuch Geol. Reichs., vol. 61), and regard the features seen at the surface as dependent on much that is unseen below, the upper folds being the crests of masses that have sunk deeply in the crust. The Dalmatian and Yugoslavia lands have received much attention. The stratigraphy of Macedonia and southern Serbia has been investigated by J. Cvijic (Petermanns Geogr. Mitt.), and work in Greece may now be linked across the Aegean with that of German authors. A. Philippson (1910) finds that the W. of Asia Minor has been much affected by late Cainozoic faulting, to which the E. and W. ridges and the plains of the Hermus and Maeander may be attributed.

In Russia, J. Samojlov (C. R. Congres geol. internal., 1913) has found that the phosphorite deposits which occur over a very wide area range from Portland to Senonian horizons. The occurrence of phosphatic limestone in the Upper Cretaceous of Bohemia (J. Wol- drich, Jahrbuch Geol. Reichs., igiyjconnectsthesedeposits with those of Belgium. This, with the Egyptian beds above the Nubian sand- stone, seems to indicate special conditions in the Cretaceous seas, perhaps connected with the evolution of bony fishes. Curiously enough, the phosphatic nodules of Silurian age in Podolia have become washed into Cretaceous strata, whence they are exploited. F. Oswald has issued (Dulau & Co., 1914) his general geological map of the Caucasus, and has described the post-Sarmatian folding on the S. flank of the chain. Upper Miocene fractures allowed of the volcanic outpourings.

For India, reference has been lightened by an index and bibliog- raphy of " Indian geological terminology " (Mem. Geol. Surv. India, vol 43, pt. I, 1913). G. E. Pilgrim has correlated the Cainozoic river-deposits with those of Europe, as follows:

U. Siwalik Middle to top of Pliocene

M. Siwalik Pontian to Placentian

L. Siwalik Tortonian and Sarmatian

Murree Beds Burdigalian to Tortonian

Gaj Beds Lower Burdigalian or Upper Aquitanian.

In Mysore, W. F. Smeeth (1912) finds that the Kolar Schists are penetrated by what was once regarded as a fundamental gneiss. The latter has, by undermining older masses, substituted a new foundation to the country. The existence in Pliocene (Siwalik) times of a great river, the " Indobrahm" of E. H. Pascoe (1920), running S. of the Himalayas from Assam to the Bay of Bengal, may now be regarded as established. Earth-movement in the W. probably determined the present separation of the Brahmaputra and Indus basins. M. Blanckenhorn and a number of colleagues have elaborately investigated the Pithecanthropus beds of Java (Leipzig, 1911), and regard them as formed in a pluvial period of early Pleistocene times.

In Egypt, H. J. L. Beadnell has shown that the Nubian sandstone (Cretaceous) was deposited on crystalline rocks and penetrated by granite, probably of Eocene age, when the mountains E. of the Nile were elevated. In Nigeria J. D. Falconer (1911) states that the earliest unaltered sediments are Upper Cretaceous, with an under- lying series of schists and quartzites and granitised gneisses. The volcanic rocks are connected with Middle Eocene and late Pliocene earth-movements. Similar conditions (C. Guiljemain, K. preuss. geol. Landesanstalt, 1909) seem to have prevailed in Cameroon. The beds with giant dinosaurs discovered in what is now the Tanganyika colony can be correlated by their marine zones, and C. Schuchert places the lower horizon as early Jurassic and the upper horizons as Jurassic to Cretaceous. Dinosaurs, probably Cretaceous, are re- corded from Bushmanland in the W. of the Cape Province, S. Africa. In Uganda, F. Oswald (1914) finds Dinotherium in Burdigalian beds. The Karroo " system " has been traced into the S. of Nyasaland by A. R. Andrew and T. E. G. Bailey, and into N. Rhodesia by A. J. C. Molyneux. A. Holmes compares the intrusive gneisses of Mozam- bique (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc., vol. 74, 1919) with the "Laurentian" of Canada. In South Africa, A. W. Rogers has transferred the Nieuwerust beds to the base of the Nama system, and beneath the Malmesbury series (see 5.229). In South West Africa, P. A. Wagner, in a comprehensive memoir (Geol. Surv. S. Africa, Mem. 7, 1916) recognizes Dwyka, Ecca, and Stormberg beds, and compares the older rocks also with those of the provinces to the east.

A nptable summary of North American stratigraphy is given by Bailey Willis (U.S. Geol. Surv., Prof. Paper 71, 1912), accompanied by a coloured map on the scale of 1 : 5,000,000. A. C. Lawson has re- turned to Rainy Lake in the W. of Ontario (Can. Geol. Surv., Mem. 40, 1913), and notes that, while the " Laurentian " gneiss penetrates the Coutchiching and Keewatin series, a second gneiss cuts the Seine (Huronian) sediments. For this he proposes the name Algoman. The work of the Canadian Survey on intrusion, absorp- tion, and reconstruction of rocks in the Haliburton and Bancroft areas of Ontario, and its bearing on the origin of amphibolites, has attracted much attention, and is supported by P. P. Sustschinsky (1914) by examples from S.W. Finland. In the United States the influence of massive algal growths (Cryptozoon, etc.) in building ancient limestones has been emphasized; Cryptozoon, on the other hand, has been compared by O. Holtedahl (1921) with mineral struc- tures in the Permian limestone of Durham. The work of C. D. Wal- cott has greatly extended our knowledge of the Cambrian strata of the north-west. N. L. Britten and C. P. Berkey have reported (1919) on the geology of Porto Rico, where beds from Eocene to Miocene rest on a volcanic series probably of Cretaceous age. J. C. Branner (Bull. Soc. Geol. America, vol. 30, ed. 2, 1920) summarizes the geol- ogy of Brazil, with a map of the same scale as for N. America.

The State Geological Survey of Western Australia has published a geological map of the state (1918) on the scale of about 1 : 3,000,000. The most productive quartz reefs of the gold-fields are metasomatic replacements of schists along shear-planes. Lastly, the stratigraphy of New Zealand promises to be much elucidated by the careful revi- sion of all known fossils by the Geological Survey, especially in regard to a delimitation of the Mesozoic and Cainozoic: systems. (G. A. J. C.)


GEORGE V. (1865- ), King of Great Britain and Ireland (see 11.745), succeeded to the British throne on the death of his father King Edward VII., May 6 1910. By the Regency Act 1910 (a temporary constitutional necessity in view of the fact that his eldest son, Prince Edward, was then not 16) his consort Queen Mary was at once nominated to become regent in the event of a demise of the Crown while the heir to the throne was under age. A new Civil List for the Crown, fixed at 470,000 a year, was approved by Parliament in 1910. An important change in the King's accession declaration was also embodied in an Act of that year, to the satisfaction of his Roman Catholic subjects, the following short and simple formula being substituted for the old " no popery " manifesto which had long been resented by them:

"I do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God profess, testify and declare, that I am a faithful Protestant, and that I will, according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the Throne of my Realm, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of my power according to law."

The coronation at Westminster Abbey on June 22 1911 was attended by representatives from all parts of the Empire and other countries, and, in order to complete the public assumption of royal authority throughout the United Kingdom, the King and Queen, with the Prince of Wales (as Prince Edward was created on June 23 1910) and Princess Mary, made State visits to Ireland, Wales and Scotland during July. There followed later in the year an important extension of the whole principle