Through the kindness of Dr. Flett there has come into my hands an interesting boulder of nepheline-syenite belonging to Sir John Murray, dredged during the expedition of the Michael Sars(1) from the Atlantic Rise at a depth of 1,750 fathoms at a place about 150 miles south-west of the south-western corner of Ireland (Station 95 of the Reports of the Michael Sars Expedition). The slices examined were slides Nos. F 2092 to F 2095 from the Geological Survey Collection and two belonging to Dr. Peach. It is a boulder of remarkable freshness, and so entirely unlike any other specimen as yet recorded from the floor of the Atlantic that the question of its origin is of some interest. The fact that no other fragments of the same type were obtained in this dredging militates against the view that it is part of a mass in situ on the sea-bottom. Its companions from the same station, and in fact all the specimens collected by the Michael Sars, have been recognized by Dr. Peach and Dr. Flett as similar to rocks occurring commonly in Ireland, the North-West Highlands, and the Southern Uplands of Scotland, and not one among them is closely related to the nepheline-syenite. Bocks of Irish types have also been described by Professor Cole and Mr. Crook (2) as a result of earlier dredgings of the Atlantic floor, and again no specimen has been found remotely resembling the subject of this paper.

I have read with very great interest Dr. Peacock's paper on the distinction between palagonite and chlorophaeite in the GeologicalMagazine, for April, 1930. On p. 170 thereof, Dr. Peacock gives a brief summary of my conclusions upon the nomenclature of chlorophaeite and palagonite as given in my paper on the same subject. Briefly, my conclusions are that as far as can be judged from existing analyses, the hydrous glassy material forming a portion of the rocks originally called palagonite has a composition that brings it within the range of composition exhibited by various specimens of chlorophaeite, and that, therefore, the term palagonite should be reserved for the impure rock, and the term chlorophaeite used for this hydrous glassy material. It was also recommended by me that the process by which in the case of the basaltic tuffs the primary glass becomes hydrated should be termed palagonitization and that the same term should be applied to the process by which the interstitial glass of basaltic lava flows is altered with production of chlorophaeite. The fact that olivine, if present, a portion of the augite, and occasionally some of the felspar, may also suffer similar alteration or be replaced, is not regarded by me as pointing to an essential difference in the two processes.

In the course of investigations amongst the Microzoa from the Gault of Copt Point, Folkestone, some Forarainifera came under my notice, which are hyaline representatives of the usually arenaceous type Webbina. These forms are remarkably similar in external appearance to those of the arenaceous group, but microscopical examination of the test under a high power reveals the finely tubulated structure characteristic of the hyaline type.

A Glance at the exhibited collections in any of our leading museums, such as the British Museum, the Geological Survey Museum, or the Oxford University Museum, shows that the naming and identification of many of the Mesozoic fossils is in a very unsatisfactory state. The private collector or the student who becomes thoroughly familiar with the fauna of his own district and then goes to these museums to classify and identify it will usually come away with many misconceptions. He finds, moreover, that the various museums contradict one another.

Whilst searching through the duplicate drawers in the Manchester Museum I found recently a specimen of Discoidea cylindrica which contained the dental apparatus in a very good state of preservation. The softness of the matrix within the test made it possible to develop and extract the jaws, and thus to detect several new features of interest.

The question as to the probable existence of a Coal-field on the south side of the Mendips having lately been prominently brought before the public in the Report of the Royal Coal Coal mission (vol. i.), it may not be uninteresting to offer a few remarks on the present aspect of the question.

The specimens described below were collected by my friend Mr. J. G. Hamling, F.G.S., and kindly placed by him in my hands for description. Being casts and often much obscured by injury and distortion, their identification must be in a degree problematical, but for the most part they seem to agree with German species of the Upper Coblenzien age.

I have for several years paid attention to glacial phenomena near Coniston, and some of my observations seem to be worth recording.

It is fortunate that Captain Lelean not merely discovered these fossils at Garadimi in Sokoto, but that he had enough sense of their importance to spend some time and trouble in their collection, and that now he has generously presented them to the British Museum. The collection includes four echinoid tests, five natural casts of Mollusca, and a few rock-specimens containing Operculina and other Foraminifera. The Mollusca, so far as their state of preservation admits, have been determined by Mr. R. Bullen Newton as: 3 Lucina cf. gigantea Deshayes, 1 Voluta cf. cithara Lamarck, and 1 undetermined Gastropod. The Echinoidea were partly covered by an impure limestone closely adherent to the test. The portions not so covered were in many places considerably worn, and the calcite was split by cracks, probably due to alternations of temperature, and rendering it very difficult to follow the course of the sutures. The appearance of these and the other specimens shows clearly that they have been lying on the surface of the ground for some time, and, in fact, Captain Lelean informs me that they were not picked out of the solid rock, but from the talus at the foot of the cliff. The notable variations in the matrix of the different specimens are thus accounted for. None the less it will be seen in the sequel that all the specimens are consistent with the ascription of a Middle Eocene age to the mass of limestone from which they were derived. Of the four echinoids, two have been determined as belonging to the genus Plesiolampas and two to the genus Hemiaster.

It will be recalled that to the list of theories relating to the origin of flint Liesegang has added another, namely, that the flint is due to the rhythmic precipitation of a silica solution diffusing through the Chalk. Cole in an admirable essay has made this view accessible to English readers, and at the same time somewhat expanded the original suggestion. Yet little by way of evidence is offered beyond a certain plausibility in the idea, and its undoubted competence to explain better than any other hypothesis yet suggested the remarkably regular recurrence of flint lines. When reading over the chief Cretaceous literature with this problem in mind, there seemed to me to be a not inconsiderable body of fact lending support to this view. Accordingly the object of this paper is to examine existing data in the light of Liesegang's suggestion in order to see whether or not it may be regarded as a reasonable working hypothesis.

In a preliminary article (1) dealing with the British Quaternary strand-line oscillations it was shown that unexpected correlations had emerged as a result of the methods employed. Of the possible assumptions the only one to prove workable was that there had been, during Quaternary time, a temporary lowering of ocean level of 1,000 metres or more. The graphs left no reasonable doubt that if the ocean level had moved in the way assumed the Mindel-Kiss interval of Penck's Alpine sequence must be equated with the major glaciation of North-West Europe and the British Isles. In order to test this, the only assumption made, it was applied to the coral reef problem (2) and there it was successful in offering what should be an acceptable solution. It was surprising to find that Darwin had actually used an apparent rise of ocean level, of the same order of magnitude, to illustrate his own theory of subsiding islands. The success of the postulate when faced with the coral reef problem was held to have invested it with a high degree of probability. It was pointed out, however, that changes in ocean level of that magnitude could best be explained by the sinking of the ocean floor, and the North Pacific Ocean was indicated as the probable position. The cause of the changes of ocean level will now be investigated and then its consequences discussed in the light of ascertained facts.

The first geological map of Scotland has a history not less interesting than that of Smith's famous map of England; seeing that what Smith accomplished, single-handed, for the southern part of Britain, John Macculloch did, with the same independence of all extraneous aid, for the northern half of the Island. Smith's fame has happily been long since vindicated; but, owing to a variety of circumstances, Macculloch has never received full credit for his grand work; on the contrary, his fair name and even his veracity have been too often cruelly aspersed.

During one of the excursions arranged by the International Geological Congress held in Sweden, 1910, we visited, under the leadership of Professor Högbom, a group of islands skirting the shore north of Sundsvall, on the Gulf of Bothnia. Among these islands Alnö and Långörsholmen are of particular interest on account of a complex of alkali igneous rocks forming the whole of the latter and the northern corner of the former. It is to this small but highly interesting group of rocks that I wish to call the attention of the reader, since apart from the short but convincing ‘guide’ prepared by Professor Högbom (1), scarcely anything has been written on the subject in the English language. The expedition was very skilfully planned, and we were thus enabled to visit several critical exposures and collect numerous specimens for microscopic study.

Lough neagh is one of the numerous lakes possessing a few species, either identical with or differing but slightly from true marine forms living in the present seas. The idiots of Lough Neagh are the pollan, Coregonus pollan, and the shrimp, Mysis relicta (a near relative of the marine Mysis oculata). They have been described by Dr. R., F. Scharff and Professor W. Dakin and Miss M. Latarchie.

Twenty-One years ago Dr. Flett in a valuable paper (Trans. Edin. Geol. Soc, vol. vii, 1897) described an exceedingly beautiful hypersthene andesite from the volcanic series of the Lower Old Red Sandstone at Dumyat in the Western Ochils. In the following brief communication I propose to give a short petrographic account of a strikingly similar rock that has occurred to me in the field in a more easterly portion of the same range of hills and which is of the same geological age.