But while it is difficult to collect fossils in situ in the upper part of the Lower Lias, a very good knowledge of the fauna is obtained from the material which may be collected on the tunnel heaps between Old Dalbyand Saxelby. I have been permitted to study the large collection of specimens from these heaps which are preserved at University College, Nottingham, and the Engineer of the Midland Railway Company gave me leave to make small excavations. The following lists give some idea of the fauna, which contains abundant Ammonites, especially of the genera Tragophylloceras, Polymorphites, and Platypleuroceras. The Foraminifera likewise are unusually interesting; a list of genera identified by Wilson has already been given by Quilter; according to the list given by H. B. Woodward no Textularia-like form is known from the Lias of any other British locality.

The directions of magnetization of samples from two sites in the Devonian Ashprington Volcanic Series, Devonshire, are similar in spite of the difference in the dip of the lavas. They are close to the mean direction for the Keuper Marls and it is concluded that they resulted from remagnetization of the lavas during the Triassic.

Analyses of eighteen samples from Jurassic marls and limestones show a large, continuous range in carbonate-clay composition. The significance of the carbonate/clay ratio is discussed, and it is show that rapid lateral and vertical transitions from marl to limestone may either reflect major changes in composition or represent only small shifts (across a critical value: 4) in the carbonate/clay ratio. The term “marl” is defined.

Carboniferous conodonts are reported from knoll limestones of B2 age in North Wales and of P1a age in the Isle of Man. The faunas from both localities are associated with Goniatites crenistria Phillips and other diagnostic goniatites. The faunas are closely similar and indicate a correlation with the Avonian conodont zone of Mestognathus beckmanni–Gnathodus bilineatus.

Ripple marks of unusual dimensions are recorded from the Sandbanks Limestone (Middle Limestone Group) at a foreshore locality 3 miles south of Spittal in North Northumberland. The structures are thought to have been formed in a partially cohesive calcareous mudas wave-oscillation ripples which have undergone penecontemporaneous modification.

The Carboniferous Ostracoda here described are from the deep Gayton Boring, near Northampton. Hand-specimens of the rock, obtained by H. J. Eunson, Esq., F.G.S., were given to us by R. Etheridge, Esq., F.R.S., some months ago; and Mr. Eunson kindly gave us another piece lately.

To explain the situation of the bore, as well as the position of the Carboniferous strata in it, we quote as follows from Mr. H. J. Eunson's paper “On the Palaeozoic Eocks beneath Northampton,” in the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xl. 1884, p. 485, etc.:

“The second trial took place near the village of Gayton, five miles south-west of Northampton, not far from the Banbury-lane crossing of the L. and N.-W. Eailway, about two miles north-west of Blisworth Station (see Ordnance Map 52 S.W.).

Lastly a reference must be made to the nu-delta structures which characterize the contact zone between the continent of Eastern Asia and the floor of the Pacific. in the Sakhalin-Yezo-Kuriles system we find, by experiment, that the northern part of the system was pressed towards the continent to a greater extent than the southern part of it. This is a consequence to be naturally expected. In the Kuriles we find a succession of fractures which prove, beyond any doubt, that the region to the west of those lines effected a southerly or south-westerly horizontal shear against the Pacific. Such a movement not being parallel to the continental border, would necessarily arouse a lateral compression between the continent and the ocean base. Now since the southern terminus of the triangular area covered by the system lies against the Inshan zone which behaved as a strengthening rib on the part of the continental mass against lateral pressure, it would be extremely difficult for the southern apex of the triangular area to shift westward. On the other hand the northern part of the area does not encounter such extraordinary resistance. Consequently the whole area suffers a counter-clockwise twisting movement with the result that the nu-delta system was generated. In this way we are able to understand how the Sakhalin-Yezo-Kuriles system was produced through a southward movement of Eastern Asia.

When man first began the study of the earth's surface, he encountered at the very beginning, along the borders of the sea-coasts, on the lowland plains, and even on the hills, certain puzzling phenomena, difficult of explanation. These perplexing observations seemed to testify, by means of ancient raised beaches, fossil oyster and mussel shells, dessicated salt marshes, fragments of wrecks, and even by ancient anchors in the hills, that at some unknown time in the past the sea had “formerly been where the land now was.”

A valuable monograph on “The Glacial Geology of the North-West of Ireland” (Proc. R. Irish Acad., xxxvi, 1924, pp. 174–314, pls. 8 and 9) by Professor J. K. Charlesworth describes the complex glacial phenomena of Tyrone. He endorses the main conclusion of my paper on the Irish Bskers (Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc., 1920, vol. 210, pp. 115–51) that they are usually deposited along the margin of a glacier, and are not due to subglacial rivers. The two works further agree in their rejection of the long advocated theory that Irish glaciation was dominated by a huge dome of ice which accumulated as snow above the Central Plain and over-rode the surrounding mountains. That view, due to Hull (Physic. Geol. and Geogr. Ireland, 1878, p. 228), has in later years been advocated, amongst others, by Mr. T. Hallissy (Proc. R. Irish Acad., xxxi, part 7, 1914, p. 9), and also by him in association with the late Professor Cole (Handb. Reg. Geol, Ireland, 1924, p. 46; Cole, ibid., British Isles, 1916, p. 328). The lines of ice movement marked on my map (op. cit., 1920, p. 143) illustrating the distribution of the Irish eskers are fundamentally inconsistent with the traditional theory; I am therefore glad to find that theory emphatically rejected by Professor Charlesworth. He adduces convincing evidence that the ice was formed on the mountains and flowed from them on to the plains. In two minor questions Professor Charlesworth differs from the views of my paper. I remarked (op. cit., p. 133) that the eskers of Tyrone are “different in several respects” from those of the Central Plain. I did not state the differences as I mentioned the Tyrone eskers only in reference to the subglacial formation of eskers; and as they gave no support to that process, I briefly referred to them as having had the same marginal origin as the typical eskers of the Central Plain.

It is claimed that the Bathonian gastropods recently assigned to Bathonella Yen do appear to not differ from Viviparus in any marked features of generic importance, and that there is really no satisfactory evidence to show that they and certain associated organisms lived in the sea rather than in fresh or brackish water.

It is not proposed to discuss the merits of the generic name applied to a group of Univalves so characteristic of and so abundant in the Jurassic rocks. Melania, Eulima, and Chemnitzia have each of them served in turn, and in adopting Chemnitzia after D'Orbigny, the late Dr. S. P. Woodward observed that the “Melaniœ” of the Secondary rocks are provisionally referred to this genus. Pictet and Campiche include the Chemnitziœ and Phasianellœ of the Oolites in one genus Psendomelania, thus preserving to a certain extent the old generic appellation.

Very hard cemented chalk stacks and crusts found locally in the upper part of the Cretaceous Chalk of north Norfolk, UK, are related to solution features. The solution features, mainly pipes and caves, formed after deposition of the overlying Middle Pleistocene Wroxham Crag, probably by routing of sub-glacial, or glacial, melt-waters derived from late Pleistocene glaciers. New geochemical (particularly stable isotope) data shows that cementation of the chalks, although related spatially to the solution features, was not caused by glacier-derived waters. The carbon isotope composition of the chalk cements is typically around −9.5‰, indicative of biologically active soils. Moreover, the oxygen isotope compositions of the cements, around −5‰, are incompatible with water δ18O values much below −9 to −10‰ (which probably precludes isotopically negative glacier-derived water), as resulting palaeo-temperatures are below zero. Taken together, the isotope data suggest chalk cementation occurred under interglacial conditions similar to the present. Dissolved calcium carbonate for cementation came from dissolution of reworked chalk in overlying MIS 12 glacial tills.

On the evening before I left Cambridge last term, I was informed by a man who brings me fossils, that some new coprolite diggings had been opened in the Fens. I was unfortunately unable to visit the workings then, but since my return to Cambridge, I have explored them in company with Mr. Moore, of St.Catherine's College. The workings are situate about a mile from Upware, which lies about twelve miles from Cambridge, and seven from Ely.

This paper describes in detail hydroplastic structures, which are ‘odd’ kinematic indicators in the basal part of the Eocene Middle Rus Formation. Such structures were previously ignored or falsely interpreted. These hydroplastic structures are found in the massive limestone exposures on the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM) campus. They occur in relation to a principal displacement zone along the boundary/interface between the Lower/Middle Rus, which is referred to as the Rus soft-sediment detachment. The structures are fist-sized vugs associated with carrot- or comet-trail imprints (VCT structures) which were previously translated calcite geodes that have been weathered out. VCT structures show transport/slip towards the NNW (345°) and are found on flat to low-dipping surfaces classified as Y, R and P shears with respect to the orientation of the Rus detachment. Palaeostress analysis indicates an Andersonian transtension stress regime, though it does not facilitate the activation of the Rus soft-sediment detachment. Detachment activity occurred due to the negative effective principal stress σ 3′ and the abnormally low frictional coefficient caused by fluid pressure. The soft-sediment Rus detachment can be considered a ‘sensitive stress sensor’ for the Zagros collision since it indicates the Arabian platform’s instability in the wider area of the Dammam Dome during the Late Eocene. This instability is attributed to the inception of the Zagros collision, which was previously considered to occur during the Oligocene based on the well-established pre-Neogene unconformity.

The Raibl period was the natural sequel of the variable and unequal movements which prevailed over Alpine areasinPermian and pre-Raibl Triassic time. Many basins formerly open were then enclosed; rauchwackes and beds of dolomite and gypsum were interbedded with fossiliferous deposits. Whereas,insome places, the dolomitic nature of the deposit is confined to special horizons, in the South Tyrol “Dolomites” it may almost be said to reign throughout. This makes it all but impossible to say when Schlern dolomite ends and Raibl beds begin. in the present incomplete state of our knowledge with regard to the heteropism of the Raibl series throughout the whole Alps, I have judged it best to begin the Raibl horizon at any particular place with the first appearance of a distinctly Raibl fauna, even although that fauna may not have been proved to correspond to the acknowledged lowest fauna of Raibl age in distant parts of the Alps.

To return for a moment to the succession of Schlern dolomite upon the Cassian beds of Enneberg, I found that, where Schlern dolomite rests on Cipit limestones, it has at its base a conglomeratic appearance, as if Cipit blocks had been imbedded in a beautifully fine white or reddish dolomitic mud, instead of the dingy brown and black tufaceous sediments. This is the case in several places, e.g. upon Pordoi and Sella Jochs, where there is no evidence of unconformity. Again, where the dolomite succeeds the thin-bedded marls and limestones of Cassian age, it does so conformably; but one and the same bed is at some parts calcareous and fossiliferous, at other parts dolomitic and unfossiliferous. Seeing that this holds good at various horizons in Lower as well as Middle Trias over the whole area of South Tyrol, we need f in d nothing remarkable in it from the point of view of the stratigraphical succession. Indeed, I have only mentioned these observations as an indication of the particular mode of transition from conditions of deposition favourable for the Cassian fauna to those in which the Raibl fauna was enabled to make an occasional appearance in the South Tyrol dolomites. At a very little distance above the base of Schlern dolomite all signs of Coral life disappear, and the deposit looks a homogeneous rock, although always retaining local variation in the degree of its dolomitism. At this stage the rock often shows typical Oolite structure. As regards the presence or want of stratification, it has as little to do with the question of the Coral Keef origin of the dolomite as the amount of magnesic salts in the rock—stratification is present and absent in one and the same “Keef.”

Among the many faults in the Marlborough district of the South Island of New Zealand four, the Wairau, Awatere, Clarence, and Kaikoura faults, are of the first importance as boundaries between great elongated tectonic blocks that determine the high mountain ranges of this north-eastern corner of the South Island and the basins, or valleys, that guide the principal rivers draining it (Text-fig. 1). Modification of these major landscape features by erosion has proceeded very far, continuing, apparently, for a long time after the differential earth movements that initiated them had come to an end; but quite recently there has been a general renewal of movement on the ancient lines of dislocation, in some important cases with reversal of the sense of the earlier displacement.

Although Rhætic rocks have already been noticed at one or two points in Leicestershire, viz. at Leicester by Mr. W. J. Harrison and between Barrow and Sileby by Mr. Etheridge, the complete sequence of this series has not hitherto been observed in that country. Very recently our attention has been directed to a section at Wigston, near Leicester, which exhibits, not only the whole thickness of these beds, but also clearly shows their relationship to the overlying Lias and underlying Triassic rocks, and which for an inland section must therefore be considered as quite unique in this country.

The rocks described below were collected by Colonel Andrade, in 1904, on the road which begins at Senza do Itombe on the Loanda-Malanji Railway, and runs in a north-easterly direction to Bango.

Gower has a reputation for its caves with their bone-beds, and for its raised beaches, but to the matter of its Glacial Drifts very little attention has been paid.