The pebble-bed in the Trias of Budleigh Salterton has attracted much notice, but I am not aware that its materials have been compared with those of the corresponding bed in the Bunter group of the English Midlands. For this purpose I recently spent a short time at the former place, and think the results worth placing on record. I select for comparison the pebble-bed on the more northern part of the wild Staffordshire moorland called Cannock Chase, with which I happen to be especially familiar. The points of resemblance shall be noted first, those of difference afterwards.

Shell elongated, spire composed of many convex whorls, which are very finely striated, 2 or 3 of the striæ being very distinct and wide apart in front of the sutures. The last 2 whorls have 10 or 11 and the other whorls have 14 or 16 well-marked ribs, with occasional varices. On the last whorl there is a slight angularity in place of keel. The wing exactly resembles that of A. Parkinsoni, and in this may be distinguished from that of A. Mantelli. The anterior canal is moderately long.

It has long been recognized that, in early Eocene times, while the “Calcaire de Mons” was being deposited in the Belgian area, large tracts of the Upper Chalk were removed by denudation from the south-east of England. The true extent of the unconformity between the Chalk and our oldest Eocene strata is now to be seen only where the Eocene cover yet remains. Even where the Chalk is so covered, the unconformity must have been accentuated to some extent in consequence of the solvent action of percolating carbonated waters, the evidence of which is familiar to us as “pipes” in the Chalk filled with Eocene strata, and the persistent bed of unworn, green-coated flints (“Bull-head” Bed) which everywhere occurs between our lowest Eocenes and the Chalk; but such secondary action is likely to have been more or less uniform throughout the whole area beneath the Tertiary cover.

The Christianburg and Akyma deposits afford excellent examples of the highly aluminous or bauxitic type of laterite formation. They here occur as parts of a residuary deposit derived from the decomposition in situ of an igneous rock, probably a porphyrite or a tuff, an almost pure quartz-sand, and masses of bauxite containing in the more aluminous varieties from 92·6 to 94·4 per cent. of the hydrates of alumina and in the ferruginous ones 64·6 per cent. of the hydrates of alumina with about 24 per cent. of the oxides and hydrates of iron.

When in 1897 Sir Archibald Geikie published his important monograph on the Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain he devoted chapter xl to a description of Iceland—so largely does our North Atlantic neighbour bulk in the eves of British vulcanologists. Geikie drew the greater part of his informatiom from Thoroddsen's writings, supplemented by those of Helland, Tempest Anderson, and Johnston-Lavis. His theme throughout was the conspicuous and abundant evidence afforded of fissure eruptions.

When a group of beds has well-defined boundaries above and below, and when moreover its palæontological characteristics coincide with its stratigraphical limits, it becomes a boon alike to the field-geologist and to the fossil collector. When, on the other hand, both limits and fossils fail to enable one to follow a group beyond a certain point, the sooner the series as such is relegated to the limbo of purely-local, convenient, but untrue divisions, the better. I propose to show in this paper that the important group of beds commonly known as the Yoredale Series in the North-Western parts of Yorkshire is a group of the latter kind, convenient indeed in that district, but quite incapable of being traced much further North either stratigraphically or palæontologically.

The genus Brachymetopus was founded by McCoy in 1847, and the generic characters were drawn from the Australian species Br. Strzeleckii, McCoy, which was at the same time described. The specific characters of this form were very briefly given, the leading features having been mentioned in the diagnosis of the genus. Dr. Henry Woodward in 1884 gave a new summary of the generic characters differing somewhat from that originally furnished by McCoy, being modified in such a way as to include the European or British species, Br. ouralicus, De Vern., Br. Maccoyi, Portl., Br. discors, McCoy, and Br. hibernicus, Woodw. The original type-specimens of Br. Strzeleckii used by McCoy (op. cit.) in drawing up the description of the genus, and figured by him at the same time, are in the Woodwardian Museum, to which they were presented in the year 1844 by the Rev. W. B. Clarke. They come from the Carboniferous Shale of Dunvegan, New South Wales. The specimens comprise three complete head-shields, two of which are hollow impressions and one a cast, and portions of three or four others; there are also three casts of complete pygidia, one perfect impression, and fragments of two others. This material demands a fuller description of the specific characters than McCoy furnished, particularly as this type-form of Brachymetopus shows features differing in several respects from those of the better known European species ascribed to the same genus. McCoy's description (op. cit.) of the species was as follows:—

“Glabella widest at the base, with one very minute, obscurely marked, cephalothoracic furrow at the base on each side; all the segments of the pygidium with an irregularly tuberculated ridge along the middle; lateral segments forming large tubercles where they join the thickened limb, opposite each of which is a short slender spine projecting from the margin”.

Travellers in Persia rarely diverge far from the beaten track between town and town, and there are areas in the South Persian mountains, hundreds of square miles in extent, in which there is no record of penetration by Europeans. Needless to say, such unexplored regions are frequently treasure houses of geological interest of sometimes the rarest and least expected kind.

The remains of many genera and species of the Order Carnivora have been discovered in the Lower and Middle Tertiaries of the European Continent, and have been described and figured in numerous valuable palæontological works and memoirs by Continental authors. That these remains are exceedingly rare in the older Tertiaries of England is proved by the fact, that only one Carnivore, the Hyœnodon, has been placed on record as occurring in them.

Mr. Hills’s paper suggests a number of questions, some of which can be fairly definitely answered, while others seem to me to be worth recording on the principle that the best way to get a question answered is to ask it. The separation of the granitic material into limited regions of the earth’s surface to form the continents could clearly not occur when the earth was fluid, and after the earth solidified any mechanical cause would meet formidable difficulties. Explanations seem to be restricted to (1) a failure or partial failure of magmatic differentiation in the oceanic regions, so that the granite has separated out since solidification in the continental regions, but remained dissolved in the oceanic ones, (2) some mechanical process arising during solidification. There are difficulties about both possibilities. Mr. Hills’s theory belongs to the second class, and I think needs serious consideration.

The structure of mountain ranges has always been difficult to understand. They often show that peculiarly complicated disturbances of strata have occurred in the process of their formation. Mountain ranges in many stages of dissection are to be seen in various parts of the world; but the better knowledge which their study has furnished us with has not, at the moment, always assisted us in the better understanding of the problem of mountain building.

IN the course of an investigation into the distribution of millerite by Dr. F. J. North and the writer, the presence of linnaeite (sulphide of cobalt Co3S4) in the clay-ironstone nodules of the Coal-measures of East Glamorgan was confirmed. That sulphide of cobalt should accompany sulphide of nickel is not surprising, but the only record of its occurrence in Wales so far as the writer is aware, takes the form of a note (without title) by A. L. des Cloizeaux in a French publication. This record was based on a specimen from the “Rhonda” (Rhondda) discovered by a Mr. Terrill, of Swansea, which does not seem to have been preserved. It is possible, too, that the mineral may occur in the Coal-measures of Belgium, as nickel and cobalt were detected in the soot from flues under which coal from Beyne (near Liége, Belgium) had been burned.

The generic name of the Sauroid Fish, here indicated by portions of jaws, relates to the unusually well-marked arrangement of the teeth on the dentary bone in two almost parallel ranks along the whole of its alveolar border. The outer rank (Plate V. fig. 1) consisting of few and large teeth; the inner rank of small ones in greater number.

In the year 1856 Mr. J. W. Salter and Mr. W. Ferguson described before the Geological Society (Q.J.G.S., vol. xiii, p. 83, 1857) a series of fossils which had been collected from Drift material at Moreseat and other localities near Aberdeen, and seemed to indicate the occurrence of Cretaceous rocks in sitû at no great distance from this locality.

The Diploporita, to which Order Sinocystis clearly belongs, have J been divided into Families according to the greater or less extension of the subvective system over the theca and the modifications thus induced in the arrangement of the thecal plates. All those in which the epithecal food-grooves do not extend beyond the adoral circlet of plates are referred to the Sphæronidæ. The line between the Sphæronidæ and the more advanced Glyptosphæridæ cannot be drawn rigidly, and such a genus as Proteocystis constitutes a natural transition. Sinocystis, however, comes well within this boundary.

The granite mass of Dorback in the Braes of Abernethy, a few miles east of the village of Tomintoul, occupies an area of from 5 to 6 square miles, the plutonic rocks outcropping through the siliceous schists and granulites of the Central Highlands of Scotland. For a highland district the exposures are rather poor, since the igneous rocks only rarely appear from under a thick covering of peat and glacial drift, but towards the eastern margin of the mass the complex is well exposed in the valleys trenched by the Allt Iomadaidh and tributary streams. Here the interest of the plutonic rocks is twofold, for they form a complex of acid, intermediate, and basic types exhibiting considerable variation in petrography, and they include a series of xenoliths of quartzite, schist, and limestone which range from a few inches in diameter to a great mass of limestone 1½ miles in length. This xenolith has been mapped by the Geological Survey of Scotland, and it was the occurrence of a contact between limestone and plutonic rocks at this locality that led to the investigations of the authors.

The Upper Trias of Leicestershire as a whole occupies the western half of the county, being bounded on the east more or less by the Soar Valley, following the strike (as a subsequent in part of its course up to its junction with the Wreake). In fact, it is on the eastern boundary near the outcrop that the beds are mainly best exposed, the region to the west south of the coal-field around which it mantles being little developed and presenting fewer exposures.

Large deposits of marine-sand occur in the Taw, Camel and Hayle estuaries of north Devon and Cornwall. Total carbonate concentrations reach 67% in the Hayle, 62% in the Camel, and 40% in the Taw. Well mixed, the sands contain modern skeletal debris of consistent composition, which persists up to 18 km and 12 km landward from the mouths of the Taw and Camel estuaries. Although primarily a molluscan sand, remains of barnacles, bryozoans, echinoids, foraminifera, sponge spicules, decapods and coralline algae are common. Carbonate mineralogy provided by these components (on a 100% carbonate basis) consists of 45% aragonite, 38% low Mg-calcite and 17% high Mg-calcite. Two estuaries of the southeast coast of Devon (the Exe and Teign) contain smaller carbonate concentrations of up to 9 and 14%. Values are low there owing to dilution by readily eroded cliff-talus from local exposures of New Red Sandstone. These Permo-Triassic sediments provide carbonate lithoclasts, however, which supplement the modern biogenic supply. Strontium values have been used to estimate the extent of carbonate lithoclasts supplied to the Exe and Teign. The present source of marine-sand of estuaries in southwest England is considered to be mostly near-shore detritus supplemented by eroded cliff-talus, derived largely from local outcrops. Once this material enters the estuarine regime it is available as a supply of sediment for further up-estuary transport.

Chemical analysis of twenty-six amphibolite facies gneisses from western Connemara are treated statistically, and used in conjunction with petrographic evidence to elucidate their origins. It is shown that the gneisses are of igneous ancestry, and have been invaded by material of silica-soda potash composition. The conditions of temperature and pressure prevailing at different times is related to the evolved mineral assemblages, and the whole sequence fitted into the general pattern of events in Connemara.