During the last few years several papers have been published which throw much light on the early history of the whales, a matter about which there have been great doubt and difference of opinion. Two important points appear to have been settled: first, that the Zeuglodonts (Archœceti) are descended from the primitive group of land-carnivores, usually known as the Creodonta, and, second, that the Toothed-whales (Odontoceti) are really derived from the Zeuglodonts. On this second point there may still be room for doubt, although in the opinion of the present writer the evidence brought forward by Professor Abel in several papers, is at least sufficient to demonstrate the extreme probability that the Archæoceti are really ancestors of the Odontoceti. The origin of the Baleen-whales (Mystacoceti) is still obscure, but the fact that numerous true teeth are found in the unborn young, points to the probability that these animals also may have originated from the same, or a closely related stock as that from which the Odontoceti have descended.

A description is given of structural imperfections such as twinning, lineage sutures and optical streaks, in Alpine quartz crystals.

It would be difficult after the closest investigation to add much to the exhaustive list of species given in the excellent paper on this subject which was read by Mr. Swanston before the Belfast Naturalists Field Club some twenty-five years ago. In that paper reference is made to the classification by the Geological Survey of the rocks of the district, under the general heading of Lower Silurian. Subsequently to the publication of the maps of the area, the information as to the Silurian fauna was greatly extended by the labours of Professor Lapworth and Mr. Swanston, to whom science is so largely indebted. The completion of the one-inch Geological Map of Ireland enabled the revision of work done in the earlier stages of the Survey's existence to be undertaken, and in this revision the North-East Silurians were amongst the first dealt with, and I was detailed to search the most promising localities for fossils, and to zone the beds in which they might occur.

The Caledonian dykes fall into two age groups, one older than the Newry complex and the other younger, and these have been compared with the Older and Younger Series of Caledonian dykes from the Ards Peninsula (Reynolds, 1931), which are older and younger respectively than the cleavage movements affecting the Silurian sediments. The suggestion is therefore made that the emplacement of the Newry complex and the cleavage movements in the Ards Peninsula were temporally associated events.

The Caledonian dykes are older than the joints in both the complex and the sediments, while the Tertiary dykes are younger.

Zoarium small, highly conical, slightly compressed in one direction, very fragile.

Zoœcia rather bluntly hexagonal, subradially arranged in straight rows which from time to time diverge to admit a new row, length ·35–·4mm., width about the same; the area varies from distinctly elliptical to practically circular; maximum length ·33 mm., breadth ·3 mm.

An occasional visit to a village on the western border of South Staffordshire has given me the opportunity of studying the Triassic deposits around there. Possibly the various sections I have visited are well known to local geologists, although, so far, I have not come across any description of them. One section in particular, I think, must have been overlooked, and this it is now proposed to describe by way of an introduction to the more important remarks which follow from the pen of Dr. A. Smith Woodward.

While working at the Lower Liassic Ammonites of the Sowerby Collection, preserved in the British Museum (Nat. Hist.), the author happened to come upon one of the paratypes of Ammonites Greenoughi, J. Sowerby, which could be recognized at once as being allied to Schlotheimia Charmassei, d'Orbigny, sp. On going into the matter in greater detail it was found that the suspicions of some Ammonite workers regarding the misinterpretation of the species by most previous authors were, indeed, well founded. Quenstedt, for example, had stated that Wright, having found Sowerby's type very much disfigured by decomposition of pyrites, substituted for it a gigantic specimen of a diameter of 440 mm., “which, however, looks different again.” Pompeckj again stated that the gigantic specimen drawn by Wright, as well as his description defined the species in a not very precise manner, and that, therefore, it was not certain that the specimen agreed with Sowerby's original.

Ooids and grapestones from some parts of the Corallian Beds (Oxfordian) contain encrustations of the foraminiferid Nubeculinella. Encrusted layers within ooids clearly reveal lengthy periods when the grains were stationary and not accreting carbonate laminae. It seems likely that during colonisation by the foraminiferids the ooids were immobilised beneath a subtidal algal mat and there are indications that the mats were sufficiently coherent to bind lumps of sediment together during disruption by burrowing organisms.

In recent discussions upon the classification of the Archæan, great importance has naturally been attached to the occurrence of beds of fragmental origin. In the distinctly volcanic beds these are numerous; in the older or more highly metamorphosed portion of the group they are less frequent and their character and origin are more obscure.

A Mongst the fossils collected from the Pendleside Limestone of Butterhaw Knoll, Cracoe, Yorkshire,inwhich Cyphaspis acanthina. (Coignou) was discovered a few years ago, there are in the Woodwardian Museum a few specimens of a species of Phillipsia, which were foundin1889 by Professor Hughes' same geological party. My attention has been recently directed to them, and it has become evident, after a careful examination, that they do not belong to any of the hitherto described species of this genus.

With the question of conformity or unconformity between the Lower Tertiary and Upper Cretaceous, there is associated a problem of great economic importance to New Zealand. The subject involves something more than a mere academic discussion. If conformity exists, then we have only one coal-bearing formation; but if unconformity, then we have two. I believe that both the stratigraphical and palæontological evidence is overwhelmingly in favour of the latter.

Very little information has hitherto been published in regard to the fossil fishes of the well-known Miocene formation of the Maltese Islands. Dr. Leith Adams enumerates seventeen species in his latest contribution to the subject, but these are almost exclusively founded upon detached teeth. It is, therefore, of considerable interest to be able to place on record the discovery of a new and tolerably complete fish, obtained from an excavation made some months ago for new docks in the harbour of Valetta.

One of the most prominent features of an ice-eroded region is the formation of a number of basins scoured out of the bedrock by the ice and rock frozen into it. When the ice has retreated these basins usually fill up with water, thus forming lakes, and Windermere appears to occupy two small basins scoured out of the floor of a valley which extends to the south as far as Cark, where it joins the coastal plain. It is, therefore, difficult to explain why the natural outflow of the lake should be through the Leven valley, a gorge extending from Newby Bridge to Haverthwaite, instead of through this broad valley which must have existed when the lake was formed (see map).

Nice.—Among the mammalian remains enumerated by Risso from the bone breccia of the Castle Catinat at Nice, are bones and teeth of ‘Lagomys’. Remains of the same genus have been more recently mentioned by Rivière, from a palæolithic deposit discovered by him in a small cave, Lympia, inside the town of Nice.

Mentone. — On pl. xvii (“Faune des grottes de Menton”), fig. 10, of Rivière's well-known publication, is represented a left mandibular ramus of a “Lagomys d'assez petite taille,” according to the explanation of the plate. In the dimensions, which are by no means small for a member of the family, as well as in the contours of the ramus, it corresponds with the Prolagus from Corsica; it certainly belongs to the latter genus, and not to the recent Ogotona (Lagomys). The text makes no mention of this rodent as occurring in the caves of Mentone, so that further confirmation seemed desirable. This has now been obtained in the most satisfactory manner, Professor Boule having found Prolagus in the “Grotte du Prince,” near Mentone. In his preliminary notice on the results of the excavations, this rodent is stated to occur together with the rabbit, etc., in strata underlying an Upper Quaternary fauna (Rhinoceros tichorhinus, reindeer, ibex, marmot, etc.), and resting on deposits containing a Lower Quaternary fauna (Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros Mercki, Hippopotamus).

Evidence is presented that some fibrous veins may be formed by recrystallization of the original rock in place. It is suggested that water in a joint promotes pressure solution of the adjacent wall rock. Redeposition under conditions of tensile strain crystallization causes growth of crystal fibres into the joint and into the wall. The effects of this process are revealed by reference to fibrous veins that are present in the laminated, dolomitic, quartz sediments at Mount Isa Mine.

The reactivation potential of pre-existing deep-seated structures influences deformation structures produced in subsequent compression. This contribution investigates thrust geometries produced in surface thrust sheets of the Sawtooth Range, Montana, USA, deforming over a previously faulted sedimentary section. Surface thrust fault patterns were picked using existing maps and remote sensing. Thrust location and regional transport direction was also verified in the field. These observations were used to design a series of analogue models, involving deformation of a brittle cover sequence over a lower section with varying numbers of vertical faults. A final model tested the effect of decoupling the upper cover and lower section with a ductile detachment, in a scenario closer to that of the Sawtooth Range. Results demonstrate that complexity in surface thrust sheets can be related to heterogeneity within the lower sedimentary section, even when there is a detachment between this section and the rest of the cover. This complexity is best observed in the map view, as the models do not show the deep-seated faults propagating into the cover. These results were then used to predict specific locations of discrete basement fault strands in the study area, associated with what is generally mapped as the Scapegoat-Bannatyne Trend. The deep-seated faults are more likely to be reactivated as strike-slip features in nature, given the small obliquity between the ENE-directed compression direction and the NE-oriented basement faults. More generally, these results can be used to govern evaluation of thrust belts deforming over faulted basement, and to predict the locations of specific fault strands in a region where this information is unknown.