Our knowledge of the geology of the district fringing the Grampians in Perthshire and Angus has been limited in the main to the published 1 inch maps of H.M. Geological Survey of Scotland (Sheets 48 and 56 in particular). A few papers in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society about the middle of the last century deal with certain exposures of special interest. The writer of the present contribution has conducted recently a detailed investigation of the area between Dunkeld and Fern, and an account of the solid geology has been published. The glacial geology presents no less interesting material or problems and, while the major portion of the results is being held over until further field-work is undertaken, one aspect, and over a limited area, will be considered here.

The extent of the glaciation in the Western-Midland Counties of England during the formation of the Chalky Boulder-clay has yet to be determined in detail. No accurate survey has at present been made of the various Drifts that are scattered over the country from Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire on the east to Worcestershire and Gloucestershire on the west; but the observations of Strickland, Brodie, Lloyd, Lucy, and others, have made known the characters of the superficial deposits at numerous localities in and around the vale of Evesham, while the probable limit of the action of land-ice during the period of maximum glaciation has been delineated on a small map by S. V. Wood, jun.

Most of the recent advances in the knowledge of trilobitestructure have come from the study of Triarthrus. Since Valiant's discovery of the antennæ, and its announcement by Matthew in 1893, the writer has published a series of papers on the detailed structure of this trilobite. Much time has also been spent in carefully working out the numerous specimens from the abundant material in the Yale Museum. Altogether upwards of five hundred individuals with appendages more or less complete have been investigated; and at the present time, it may safely be said that the important exoskeletal features have been seen and described.

There is some doubt as to this being the type. The specimen in the Bristol Museum so referred is stated to have come from “Warminster,” but Sowerby gives “Blackdown” as the locality of his type. The specimen in this Museum agrees very well with Sowerby's figure, and also with Davidson's reproduction of the same (fig. 31, supra), but not with fig. 32, the specimen stated by him to be in the Bristol Museum.

Abyssinian Deposits.—During 1911 an Italian resident in Eritrea discovered a remarkable occurrence of potash salts in the Piano del Sale, near the provisional boundary between the Italian colony and Abyssinia. On account of its equivocal situation, development was somewhat handicapped during the early stages by Abyssinian hostility. Fortunately these preliminary difficulties were successfully overcome, and the deposit proved to be of great assistance to the Allied Powers during the war. The rate of production has gradually increased, and the estimated output for 1918 is stated to be equivalent to 50,000 tons of KCl.

Cambrian of Westrogothia, Oland, etc.—The Cambrian Rocks are shown in several other localities in Scania. The basal sandstones (Lugnas or Eophyton sandstones) near the Baltic coast, near Delperöd. The Hardeberga sandstones (Fucoid Sandstone) are found wherever the Archæan is bared, as near Rostånga, Lund, Eljaröd, and Cimbrishavn. Sections of the Alum schists are rarer. The most perfect is that of Kiviks Esperöd on the Baltic, where the Coronatus Limestone or Exsulans horizon of the Parad. Tessini zone well developed. The identity between its palæontological sequence and that of Andrarum was demonstrated by Nathorst in 1876.

In 1844 Carpenter [1] divided the fossils then known as Terebratula into two groups—a perforate group, having the test covered with minute pores, and an imperforate group (the Rhynchonellids). These perforations (see Plate III) correspond to tubular processes of the mantle.

The northern part of the Guiana Shield consists of large tracts of basic and intermediate volcanic rocks and sediments which are thought to have formed under geosynclinal conditions. During the 2000 m.y. Trans-Amazonian Orogeny these rocks were subjected to tectonism and metamorphism resulting in a broad belt of green schist facies with local and isolated patches of high grade metamorphic rocks and gneiss complexes. In the early stages of orogeny during which folding and probable block faulting of the sediments and volcanics took place, these rocks were intruded by basic and ultra-basic rocks giving rise to metagabbro-amphibolite-peridotite associations, commonly in the areas of subsequent high-grade metamorphism. In an attempt to account for the frequent supply of basic magma during and after the orogeny it is postulated that mantle peridotites rose diapir-like below the sinking geosyncline, and by partial melting not only provided basic magmas but also thermal energy which spread upwards to metamorphose the already tectonized crustal rocks; recent gravity measurements indicate an upwarped ‘sima’ under the Bartica Assemblage gneiss complex.

Since the publication of the notes on some new fishes from the English Purbeck and Wealden Beds five years ago, the Rev. W. R. Andrews, of Teffont, has kindly entrusted to the writer for examination a fine series of Purbeckian fishes from the Vale of Wardour. All the members of this fauna are remarkably diminutive, compared with those met with in the corresponding formation in Dorsetshire; but nearly all the species are well preserved, and some are sufficiently novel to be worthy of detailed description. The Pycnodont genus Mesodon, which was first described from the English Purbeck in the paper already cited, is here represented by one or two more forms; the Lepidosteoid Macrosemius is now first definitely recorded as a British fossil; additional examples of Pleuropholis extend previous information of that genus; new specimens of Leptolepis Brodiei add to the known specific characters of this fish; and the opportunity is now afforded for publishing a figure of the small Palæoniscid, Coccolepis andrewsi.

The Sparassodonta are an interesting group of extinct mammals found in the Tertiary formations of Patagonia. They appear to have taken the place of true Carnivora in South America during most of the Tertiary period, as the Carnivorous Marsupials do in the modern fauna of Australia. Their relationship has been in dispute since they were first made known to science by the distinguished South American paæontologist Florentino Ameghino. In dental formula and other characters of the teeth and jaws they agree with the Carnivorous Marsupials, and show a high degree of adaptive specialization for predaceous habits. Dr. Ameghino was able to determine, however, from specimens in his collection, that the replacement of the premolars, in certain genera at least, was more complete than in modern marsupials, and approached that of the placental carnivora. He regarded them, therefore, as an intermediate group, ancestral to the Creodonta and modern Carnivora. Mr. Tomes, in his interesting study of thb enamel structure of the Creodonta and allied groups, has recently shown that in one genus of Sparassodonts the enamel shows the more highly differentiated structure of the true Carnivora, instead of the more primitive structure of Marsupial Carnivores. The collections made by the Princeton and American Museums in the Santa Cruz formation of Patagonia contain a splendid series of Sparassodont remains, including skulls and skeletons of the principal genera, which have recently been exhaustively studied by Dr. Sinclair. These show that the Sparassodonts agree with Marsupials, and especially with Thylacinus in almost all the distinctive features of dentition, skull, and skeleton characters by which they are separated from the placental mammals.

Fossil remains in the Coniston Grit Series in the Lake District are generally so scarce, except in the flaggy beds exposed in the quarry near Latrigg on Applethwaite Common, that considerable interest attaches to the discovery, made in January of the present year, of a bed which is highly fossiliferous, in a quarry recently opened in connexion with the drainage works of Bowness and indermere. The quarry is close to the shore of the lake, near the outh-west corner of the Calgarth estate.

The evidence relating to the habitation in England at some distant period of a species of the section of the genus Felis represented by the Lynx, rests, up to the present time, upon a portion of a skull and a ramus of a mandible, which were discovered in a cavernous fissure in rocks of Permian age, in Pleasley Vale, Derbyshire. They were found by Dr. Ransom, who communicated an interesting paper descriptive of the fissure and its contents, to the British Association Meeting held at Nottingham in 1866, and the fragments were then referred to the Lynx of Northern Asia (Felis cervaria). Subsequently they were examined by Professor Boyd Dawkins, who, after carefully comparing the skull, jaw, and teeth, with the corresponding parts of other species of Lynxes, and also taking into consideration its geographical range, says, “that they may be referred with equal justice to the Lynx of Norway and Sweden” (Felis borealis).

The very interesting igneous rocks of the Mozambique Company's territory have not had much attention paid to them in the past, though some of them were noticed in the first paper dealing with the Karroo beds near Tete, that by Lapierre. That writer was in advance of some subsequent observers in his recognition of the peculiar character of the Lupata lavas: so far, indeed, have some others been from this that the various geologists working in the Tete district have actually been accustomed to call the Karroo basalts the “Lupata Volcanics”, as is done in the most recent paper referring to that area. The age of the basalts was demonstrated by the writer in some notes contributed to this Magazine in 1922, and to establish this it was necessary to discuss the position of the Lupata lavas. Messrs. Teale and Campbell Smith subsequently published the first reliable petrographical descriptions of some specimens previously collected by the former, and the present paper is intended to supplement by further field and petrographical notes the valuable work of Dr. Teale, who has long since sought pastures new. It may be mentioned that one of the chief features of the area is the way in which the various igneous rocks are sometimes intermixed. This is a leading factor in contributing to the uncertainty which surrounds the dating of some of the intrusives. Thus a large number of intrusions of various kinds traverse the Karroo basalts and these are undoubtedly of two and perhaps of three different periods. Faulting and overlaps also cause further complications, as may be seen in the small sedimentary area near Mutarara, where Tertiary, Cretaceous, and Karroo volcanics occur closely associated.

In 1899 Messrs. Rupert Jones and Henry Woodward stated that Belinurus “has not at present been found in rocks of earlier age than the Coal-measures.” Belinurus grandœvus, described in the same paper, was referred, with probability, to the Lower Carboniferous. A writer (“ R. W. E.”) in the Ottawa Naturalist for January, 1900, thereupon called attention to the record of Belinurus from the Kiltorcan Beds of Ireland. This record is founded on Mr. W. H.

The great Valley of the Thames has long been known to contain deposits of gravel intermixed with freshwater beds; but the true Geological age both of the valley of its deposits was long in doubt. Latterly the view expressed by Mr. Prestwhich (in which he was of accord both with Professor Morris and Mr.Trimmer), that the whole was newer than the Boulder-clay, has met with acquiescence. The general structure of the deposits in this valley, although they form the most extensive of the Post-Glacial series in England, has not however yet been shown in any comprehensive manner.

The investigations which I have carried out in the Ipswich district of Suffolk, and certain discoveries (to be described shortly) made during the past year at Mundesley, Norfolk, have impressed upon my mind the possibility that the ordinary platessiform and batiform palæolithic flint implements found usually in river terrace gravels are older geologically than has been generally imagined. This, however, is not altogether an original opinion, as the late Professor James Geikie, F.R.S., the late Mr. S. B. J. Skertchly, and Mr. A. S. Kennard, basing their views upon evidence other than that upon which I rely, arrived at a similar conclusion. As is well known, it was stated authoritatively many years ago that our English river-valleys containing implementiferous gravel beds were cut through, and are therefore later than the Chalky Boulder-clay.