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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2009
It is needless to recapitulate, for the information of the readers of the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, all the incidents which are known to accompany the formation of new land by rivers, or to repeat the descriptions which have been given of the more remarkable instances of them, such as those of the Nile, the Mississippi, the Ganges, the Rhone, the Po, and the Danube. These have been scientifically discussed long ago, by Lyell in his Principles. The object of this paper is rather to suggest how a careful collation of such facts as may be learned in connexion with the formation of modern deposits at the mouths of great rivers, or in great estuarine areas (such as the Wash), which receive a number of streams from widely-extended inland catchment-basins, may throw light upon the history of older formations of the same kind, and more especially of those of Tertiary times, during which many important changes were wrought in the physiography of the continent of Europe.
Paper read before the British Association, Section C, at the Leeds Meeting, 1890.
page 359 note 1 See ProfMeunier, Stanislas, “Les Causes Actuelles en Géologie,” pp. 269, 270.Google Scholar
page 359 note 2 I may be allowed to refer to a sketch in a popular form, of what I conceive to have been the outline of the history of the Thames Basin, as I put it forward in a lecture last winter, a summary of which appeared in “Science Gossip” for May and June, 1891. I should like to draw particular attention to the many points of similarity between the conclusions I have arrived at as to the Tertiary history of this part of England, and those arrived at by Prof. Saceo of Turin, as to the Po Basin. (See “Bull. de la Soc. Belge de Géologie, etc., tome iv. 1890.)
page 360 note 1 See Naumann-Zirkel, : “Elemente der Mineralogie;” Leipzig (Engelmann), 1885.Google Scholar Also, Roth's, Justus “Chem. und Allgem. Geol.” p. 559.Google Scholar
page 361 note 1 Perhaps the Norfolk Broads present some analogy to the conditions which prevailed in this old Tamisian estuary in later Eocene time.
page 361 note 2 Described by Lyell in the “Principles.”
page 362 note 1 See Q.J.G.S. vol. xliv. p. 616, 1888.Google Scholar
page 363 note 1 Pebbles of this form are frequently used for rough paving-work, in this part of the country, just as the great market-place of Nottingbam is paved with Bunter pebbles collected from the drift of the Trent valley. The whole of the streets of Norwich were thus formerly paved with pebbles from the Boulder-clay and Drift.
