During the last two and a half years I have been engaged in the study of the Cornish Veinstones in the field and in the laboratory by microscopic and other methods, and have come to the following conclusions:—

This Plesiosaur was collected from the Oxford Clay at Peterborough by A. N. Leeds, Esq., F.G.S., and was acquired for the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow University, by Professor J. W. Gregory. The specimen has many striking resemblances to Cryptocleidus oxoniensis, but detailed examination showed that it could not belong to that species, and the differences existing in the paddle, shoulder-girdle, number of vertebræ, and conditions of ossification are such that it cannot be retained in that genus as now defined. The paddle closely resembles that of Tricleidus, but the shoulder-girdle alone is sufficient to prevent the inclusion of the specimen in that genus. It seems advisable to create a new genus, and as it may be some time beforea full description can be published a preliminary account is here given.

The regional metamorphism of the Pakhals in the Yellandlapad area is synchronous with folding and is superimposed in the east by dislocation metamorphism due to overthrust. The development of ottrelite is contemporaneous with the overthrust. It is suggested that the conditions of growth of ottrelite may be distinctive from those of chloritoid.

After the little survey of the pluvial epoch contained in thepreceding section we may turn our attention again to England.In the Thames Valley at Swanscombe (Barnfield pit) there is foundbeneath the deposits which yield early Chellean implements a yetolder layer which does not contain any implements.

If one were asked to put into a few words the general results which have been arrived at from a study of the Glacial deposits, he would probably say that these deposits gave evidence of a severe Arctic condition of things having obtained in this country,—that the gradual approach of this Arctic climate caused the disappearance from our area of the fauna and flora which had previously characterized it,—that during the continuance of the cold in Britain several speciesof mammalia appear to have died out in the more southern regions of Europe, whither they had migrated,—and that it was not until after our climate had become greatly ameliorated that these islands were visited by what are termed the “Post-glacial mammalia,” several species of which, however, had been denizens. of Britain and northern Europe inPre-glacial times. In short, our island, throughout the Glacial period proper, is commonly supposed to have remained a barren waste of snow and ice. But the evidence which has been accumulating during recent years will compel us, I believe, to modify materially these general inferences. So far from the Glacial epoch having been one long continuous age of ice, it would appear to have been broken up by many intervening periods of less Arctic, and even temperate conditions, during whichthe snow and ice disappeared from our low grounds, and the glaciers shrunk back into our mountain valleys. I speak, of course, of that portion of the Glacial epoch which was antecedent to the general submergence, and is represented by the Till or Boulder-clay of Scotland. la this short paper I propose to give an outline of the facts upon which these conclusions are based. But before doing so it may be well to point out the order of succession of the Scottish drift deposits, which is now no longer a matter of dispute. Beginning with the lower beds, we have the following sequence

We report the first evidence of fault rocks (FRs) developed during high-pressure/low-temperature (HP/LT) subduction-related metamorphism, within quartz+epidote pods embedded in the glaucophane–lawsonite-bearing ophiolitic metabasalts of the Diamante–Terranova unit (Calabria, Italy). FRs occur as relic injections appearing as thin dark seams, locally showing an internal foliation characterized by tabular, curvilinear and meander-like shapes, and consist of very fine grains of glaucophane and titanite, locally including survivor clasts of epidote and lawsonite. Some boudinaged veins show glaucophane fibres in the boudin necks, marking a clear HP/LT syn-metamorphic origin at c. 30 km depth. The injected FRs can be alternatively interpreted either as pseudotachylytes or as fluidized ultracataclasites. Although subsequent recrystallization largely obliterated primary diagnostic features, the occurrence of (i) different-coloured flow streaks, characterized by alternating layers of glaucophane and titanite, (ii) well-developed flow folds and (iii) corroded epidote survivor crystals could indicate a viscous flow of molten material characterized by a non-uniform chemical composition. With this in mind, we support the hypothesis that these fine-grained veins were originally pseudotachylytes generated by the frictional melting of the glaucophane-rich layers of the Diamante–Terranova metabasalts, likely related to seismic events occurring during the Eocene along thrust faults within the subducting oceanic Ligurian lithosphere. The lack of evidence for pseudotachylyte relics in the metabasalt source rock argues for a selective preservation, largely dependent on the efficient mechanical shielding action of the stiffer quartz+epidote pods.

These notes on fossil Phyllopods refer to some interesting specimens, mostly of Palæozoic age, which have come to hand since the publication of Part II. of our “Monograph of the British Palæozoic Phyllopoda” (Palæontographical Society), 1892.

Figs. 1 and 2 represent Estheriœ from the upper part of the great Karoo Formation of South Africa. Figs. 3 and 4 are exposed on a piece of Moffat shale from Dumfries-shire; and, Fig. 3

Miocene foraminifera from the Surat-Broach and Kathiawar regions of Western India are recorded. The suggested correlation of Miocene beds of Western India, and the stratigraphical distribution of foraminifera common to W. India, Ceylon, Indonesia, and the Middle East is indicated in 2 Tables.

My friend Prof. T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., has lately received several Palæozoic fossils for examination from the rich collection of Mrs. Robert Gray, of Edinburgh, and has, with the owner's kind permission, placed two pieces of a very remarkabte fossil in my hands, for the purpose of examination and description.

The old lacustrine deposits of Ireland do not seem to have attracted so much attention from geologists as they deserve. By the old lacustrine deposits, we understand the dried-up lakes at present occupied by peat-bogs, with their underlying beds of marl and clays. During the past century it was known that in these bogs, or in the marl-beds beneath them, were found antlers and bones of a gigantic extinct deer, which Professor Owen named Megaceros Hibernicus, and now popularly known as the “Irish Elk,”1 not that it was exclusively confined to Ireland, its remains having been found in England and Scotland, also in France and Germany, and it is even reported to occur in caves as far east as the Altai Mountains in Asia.

THE excursion to East Anglia in the week preceding the Centenary Meeting of the British Association will include visits to four of the sections of the Waltonian Red Crag at present accessible, and the occasion seems appropriate for the publication of studies which were interrupted in the year 1885 by my removal to Lancashire and were not resumed until the year 1930, after a lapse of forty-five years.

Of the various members of the Younger Granite Complex columbite is found only in the biotite granites. It occurs as an accessory mineral, and varies in amount in different types.

Wall rocks on either side of narrow fluorite veins cutting Dinantian Limestones at Butts Quarry, Derbyshire, exhibit unusual and spectacular alteration structures. Buff, ‘blackened’ and grey limestone lithologies, containing significant amounts of euhedral quartz crystals, occur in a zoned sequence adjacent to the veins. The alteration structures are attributed to a two-stage process involving silicification and subsequent re-mobilization of silica by fluids passing along the vein.

In the centre of Ross-shire, to the west and north-west of Ben Wyvis, there are large intrusive masses of granite gneiss lying in the midst of the sedimentary Moine schists. They have a N.N.E. strike and extend over a tract of country about 20 miles in length, from Loch Luichart, near Garve Station (Dingwall and Skye line), to Carn Bhren, within 3½ miles of Ardgay Station (Inverness and Wick line). A coarse augen gneiss with large elliptical eyes of pink orthoclase or perthite, sometimes 2 inches long, is the principal rock, but a finer-grained granite gneiss also occupies considerable areas, especially in the region of Carn Chuinneag (see Map, Fig. 1). Boulders of the augen gneiss have been widely distributed by ice, and are common on the shores of the Moray Firth, etc. For that reason the “Inchbae augen gneiss” has long been familiar to geologists, though little was known about the parent mass, except that gneisses of this type were exposed on the high road between Garve and Ullapool, particularly in the lower part of Strath Rannoch.

In the course of detailed mapping over this area, with a view to throwing some light on the complicated geological structure of the district, the discovery of various graptolites, largely from new localities, both confirms and extends the previous records of Dr. C. A. Matley and Mr. W. Keeping.

Since Sir Charles Lyell published his most accurate and detailed paper “On the Tertiaries of Belgium and French Flanders,” geologists could only differ in their opinions on the facts mentioned by him, New discoveries have been made in Belgium only in the last few years; besides the splendid cuttings in the ditches for the fortification of Antwerp, about which I am going to speak afterwards, there has been found, near Mons, by sinking a well, a thick bed of lime and limestone at the base of all hitherto-known Belgian Teritiary beds, containing numerous and well-preserved Tertiary marine and fresh-water mollusca. The discoverers, MM. Cornet and Briart, Engineers of Mines, and most zealous geologists, described very carefully the geological position and afterwards the extension of these lowest Tertiary beds in Hainaut. In their first paper they had tried to determine the Molluscan fauna of this basement bed, after Deshayes' works; but, out of 150 species, they could name only 22, and amongst these there are still some very doubtful ones.

(1) Reasons are given for believing that the holotype of Anthracomya adamsi Salter (the genotype of Anthracomya) has been correctly identified.

(2) It is shown that the horizon of this presumed holotype is near the middle of the Similis-Pulchra Zone, and is near if not identical with the horizon of A. hindi Wright.

(3) Anthracomya adamsi at that horizon has no close connection with A. modiolaris (from which it may, however, have been derived at a lower horizon). The distinction of these two forms is discussed, and it is suggested that among well preserved specimens only very occasional variants cause any difficulty in identification. The shells referred to A. adamsi. s. lat. by Weir and Leitch from the base of the Similis-Pulchra Zone (1936) are not considered in this paper.

(4) The relations of A. adamsi, A. hindi and A. warei are briefly discussed: in view of the limited distribution of the various species it is thought best for the present to retain the three specific names.

The appraisal and development of fractured reservoirs are challenging tasks because of the combined variations in reservoir quality and natural fracture distribution. Fracture models are built routinely to support both appraisal and development decisions for such reservoirs. One of the key objectives of these models is to generate three-dimensional (3D) fracture properties for dynamic flow simulations. In this paper, we illustrate the discrepancy between the scale of observation required to build a thorough geological understanding of the subsurface and the simplification imposed by modelling. We use a case study carried out in the context of an exploration campaign of a Cretaceous carbonate reservoir in Egypt. After describing the regional geological setting of the area, we share a series of detailed observations on open-hole logs, cores, thin-sections and borehole images. These observations are focused on reservoir architecture, fracture typology and fracture connectivity. Observations are then integrated with the regional geological context to build a conceptual fracture model and to characterize the uncertainty affecting the essential parameters of this model. The conceptual model, combined with 3D seismic data, is used to define a fracture modelling strategy. This strategy includes a drastic simplification of the conceptual model to generate 3D discrete fracture network scenarios that are calibrated using pressure communication data from the exploration wells. Another extreme simplification is then necessary to populate 3D simulation grids. In the case study presented, the key tuning parameters to obtain a dynamic match are the grid cell orientation and the width of the modelled fault damage zone.

The rock record from the late Early Jurassic in southern Africa encompasses the history of voluminous continental flood basalt outpourings associated with the magmatic events in the Karoo–Ferrar Large Igneous Province (LIP) in southern and eastern Gondwana. This multiphase magmatism produced one of Earth’s largest continental flood basalt successions volumetrically and is assumed to have been a main driving mechanism in late Early Jurassic global environmental perturbations, including mass extinctions and changes in climate. In southern Africa, these Lower Jurassic flood basalts are interbedded with fossiliferous sedimentary rocks, which in turn host the last signs of ‘Karoo life’ in the form of fossil plants, invertebrates and vertebrates, including the trackways of hopping mammals and the ultimate Karoo dinosaurs. The sedimentology and palaeontology of the interbeds archived depositional and biotic processes in running water as well as in and around shallow, up to ∼10 m deep freshwater lakes and ponds in the late Early Jurassic. This study explains how a complex freshwater palaeo-habitat prevailed – albeit temporarily – in this extremely stressful environment, which was unlike any modern volcanic system. The evidence collectively points to seasonally wet, warm temperate climatic conditions during the early phases of Karoo volcanism. Moreover, the evidence in the rocks also suggests that the dynamic volcanic conditions resulted in shifting habitats that likely facilitated the migration of the ultimate Karoo biota towards the north and west, away from the main Karoo land of fire, just before Gondwana started to disassemble. This refinement of the environmental dynamics in southern Gondwana presented herein lays the groundwork for future high-resolution volcanological, geochronological and chemostratigraphical studies aimed at the nuanced understanding of the global environmental effect of the Karoo–Ferrar LIP.