A Year or two ago we received from Mr. James Bennie, of the Scottish Geological Survey, a washing of Lower-Carboniferous shale from Plashetts, Northumberland, which was very rich in the remains of Ostracods. Among other species occurring therein was a Beyrichia-like form, ribbed as in Kirkbya, and with a wide fringe about the free margins of each valve.

Length, 6 to 7 inches, shape fusiform. Cranial roof bones sculptured with undulating ridges passing at times into elongated tubercles. Mandible sculptured externally with slightly undulating longitudinal ridges, which run tolerably parallel with the upper and lower margins of the jaw; dentary margin finely tuberculated. Maxilla of the usual form, its dentary margin likewise finely tuberculated, the rest of the surface covered with undulating ridges. Scales of moderate size; those of the front of the flank are higher than broad; posteriorly they become more oblique and equilateral, while towards the dorsal and ventral margins they become rather lower than they are broad. Their ornament consists of sharp stronglymarked ridges, nearly straight and parallel, and only occasionally bifurcating or intercalated. On the scales of the anterior part of the flank these ridges run rather diagonally over the surface of the scale from above downwards and backwards, but over the greater part of the body they are parallel with the upper and lower margins of the scale, and seldom does any greater obliquity of the ridges in the anterior and lower part of the scale give any indication of the diagonal division of the pattern which is so common in striated scales in the family Palæoniscidfe. Posteriorly, a peculiar and highlyornamental character is given to the squamation by the fact that the lowermost ridge, uniting or not with the one next above it, is of unusual breadth, and stands prominently out.

While recently turning over the plates of this Monograph, my attention was arrested by the lobe-line figured on plate 63, and on looking at the explanation of the plate given on the opposite page, I was much surprised to see that it was stated to be the “Lobe-line of Harpoceras ovatum, magnified.” On the same plate, just below (fig. 4) is a side view of the Harp, ovatum with its lobeline in situ, and I suppose it to be this lobe-line that is magnified. But there must surely be some mistake here. Compare the lobeline, fig. 7, with that on fig. 4, and notice the much greater width of the siphonal saddle in fig. 4 (than in fig. 7), where, on account of the curvature of the fossil, it would be really smaller. To say nothing of the obliquity of the inner portion of that on fig. 4, where is the first auxiliary lobe (nearly as large as the inferior lateral in fig. 7) to be found in fig. 4? I think it will be apparent that for some reason or other the two lobe-lines are different. But is the lobe-line, fig. 7, the correct lobe-line for such a species as the Harp, ovatum here figured? I must say No! Turning for a moment to Wright's description of the lobe-line of Harp, ovatum, page 446, we find it stated, “The suture-line is of the radians type.”

We are informed by M. Ferry that d'Orbigny was supplied with, the greater part of the Corals of his Bajocien by M. Eugene Beabeau, of Langres, who has stated of the present species that it was first named Calamophyllia glomerata by d'Orbigny, and afterwards by an error Synastræa consobrina, and further, that he at the same time described in his Prodromus another species under the same name. MM. Milne Edwards and Haime, it appears, were misled by this error, and referred the Coral sent by M. E. Beabeau, to the Synastræa consobrina of the Prodromus. This in brief is the statement of M. Ferry, and it is obvious that the Synastræa consobrina of the Prodromus, and the Clausastræa consobrina of MM. Milne Edwardsand Haime are not the same, and that the latter is the Coral forwarded by M. E. Beabeau from Langres.

The Triassic strata which form the country surrounding Birmingham consist of the usual divisions of sandstone and marl; the sandstones predominating below, the marls above. In the immediate neighbourhood of the town, the sandy beds are divided from the marly or clayey strata by a dislocation or line of fault which runs from north-east to south-west, taking a line from Erdington to Rubery, and traceable altogether for a distance of about twenty miles. The fault runs through the town of Birmingham nearly parallel to the River Rea, and from a quarter to half a mile west of the present bed of the river. The Lower Keuper sandstone, which forms a surface band one to two miles in width on the west of this fault, is a porous stratum about 200 feet in thickness. It is underlain by the Bunter Pebble Beds, 300 to 400 feet in thickness, which crop out further to the west, andwhich contain an inexhaustible supply of water. From three deep wells in the suburbs of Birmingham —two on the north at Perry and Witton, and one on the south near Selly Oak—the Corporation Waterworks obtain daily a supply of over eight million gallons of water, most of which comes from the Pebble Beds, which occupy the lower portion of each well or bore-hole. The water is of good quality, showing from nine to fifteen degrees of hardness.

Since the publication of the Third Eeport on Palæsozoic Phyllopoda (Brit. Assoc. Eeport for 1885), we have examined many additional specimens in the Museums of the Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, and in the Braidwood Museum belonging to Dr. J. R. S. Hunter, of Braidwood, near Glasgow. Mr. James Thomson, F.G.S., has given us a quantity of nodules, containing remains of Ceratiocaris, from the Lesmahago district; and other friends have lent us several interesting specimens.