In my third Report “on the structure and classification of the fossil Crustacea,” presented on the Geological Section of the of the British Association, at their Meeting in Dundee, 1867, I stated that a new Crustacean had been obtained, in 1858, by Sir Philip Grey-Egerton, Bart., M.P., F.R.S., from the Lower Lias of Barrow-on-Soar, Leicestershire, by whose kindness it is now preserved in the British Museum: and also that another specimen, from the Lower Lias of Somersetshire, belonging evidently to the same species, had subsequently been found by Mr. Charles Moore, F.G.S., at Bath. The specimen from Barrow-on-Soar (the impression and counterpart of which is contained in two blocks of Blue Lias Stone) exhibits on the surface of the slabs, the entire carapace, the eye, antennæ, the five ambulatory thoracic feet; but in this specimen the abdominal somites and caudal appendages are entirely wanting. (See PI. VII. Fig. 1.)

Mr. Hill's paper in the June Number of the Magazine has incited me to recur to the great question possibility of changes in the earth's axis of rotation within itself. Mr. Hill is well known to be an accomplished geologist; but he writes as if he were simply a physicist, without sympathies for the difficulties of his brethren of the hammer. Yet we feel certain that such is not the case. We know that he has studied in the field the tremendous movements which the strata have undergone, being often compressed into a small part of their original length: that he has appreciated the almost ubiquitous presence, either in past or present time, of volcanic activity: that he must feel how unsatisfactory all explanations short of a change in latitude are to account for the flora of a warm climate within the arctic circle. We therefore appeal to him, and to others similarly qualified, to look at this subject from both sides.

A considerable part of the material forming the present communication was collected as long ago as 1862, but the specimens obtained at that time, with the notes thereon, remained in abeyance until quite recently. On a renewed examination of them, it appeared that much of what had been noted down had not been superseded, and this induced me to go through the whole of it again, and make such additions and modifications as seemed necessary to bring it into its present form. And I have done this in the hope, and indeed in the belief, that it will serve a twofold purpose. It will make known some forms which are new, not only to the particular locality, but also to the catalogue of English species; and it will furnish a more complete list than has yet appeared of the species from one of the best-known Coral-reefs of the Inferior Oolite.

The Meeting of the British Association at Plymouth has not unnaturally been the means of directing attention to some of the most complex points of Devonshire geology, and of reviving the discussion as to the age and position of the Devonian series in North and South Devon. Mr. Jukes, it will be remembered, died in 1869. Had he lived longer, his energy of purpose would doubtless have led him to carry on the work he had begun, until he could either prove the correctness of his views, or satisfy himself that the generally accepted classification was, after all, the right one. The followers of Jukes seem to confine themselves to those portions only of the district which he had more specially studied—North Somerset, Lynton and Pickwell Down; searching in almost hopeless despair amongst the lower rocks, instead of beginning at the other end of the scale, with the Millstone-grit, and tracing the beds downwards. As a result, the fossiliferous beds of the Upper Devonian have been almost entirely neglected, and their relation to the Carboniferous slates passed over.

Recent operations in connexion with the Dundee Harbour works have been the means of opening up a very interesting section of superficial deposits.