During the present survey of Cornwall Mr. Clement Reid has discovered several interesting fossils which provide a substantial addition to the previously recorded Devonian fauna of that part of the country. The forms described below were found by Mrs. Clement Reid, to whose patience and skill I am also indebted for the developing of the best parts of the specimens. My best thanks are due to my colleague Mr. H. H. Thomas for the accompanying drawings of the two forms.

1. A sample of modern Fenland silt containing 8·98 per cent of carbonate was found on minaralogical examination to include dolomite as well as aragonite in its mineral assemblage.

2. The dolomite is present in fresh angular crystal grains which suggest a secondary and recent origin of the mineral. It has possibly been deposited from sea-water which periodically covers the foreshore of the Fenland border of the Wash.

3. The general mineral composition of the silt resembles closely that of certain geologically recent deposits of Cambridgeshire, and points to the boulder-clay left by the North Sea glacier as the chief source of the material of which the silt is composed. The silt has mainly been deposited by sea-currents which carry southwards the eroded glacial deposits of the South Yorkshire and North Licoln-shire coasts.

4. An attempt is made to interpret the results of a chemical analysis of the silt in the light of its mineralogical composition, chiefly with regard to carbonate, potash, and phosphate. Muscovite, is found to be the main source of potash, and apatite of phosphate in the silt.

When describing river terraces in his recently published account of the “Ice Age in West China” Richardson has assumed without question that in a period characterized by climatic oscillation wetter (and generally also colder) episodes result in aggradation and that degradation follows diminished precipitation.

The labours of Mr. Benjamin Harrison around Ightham, in Kent, have been before the scientific world since May, 1889, when Sir Joseph Prestwich read his now historic paper before the Geological Society “On the occurrence of Palæolithic Flint Implements in the neighbourhood of Ightham, Kent; their distribution and probable age.”

The purpose of this note is to put on record the discovery of Lower Coal Measure strata in the west of Ireland. The succession is approximately 500 feet thick and includes the Gastrioceras subcrenatum and the Gastrioceras listeri marine bands. Of particular interest is the occurrence of a coarse felspathic sandstone in the cycle of sedimentation which includes the G. listeri horizon: the sandstone is very similar in lithology to the distinctive Clay-Gall Sandstone of the Leinster Coalfield.

The generic and specific names and the horizons are those given by the authors. The numbers in square brackets correspond to those of the Museum register. A list of references and a history of the collections is given at the end. The localities, except where otherwise stated, are in Norfolk.

Sir,—The Geological Magazine for August, p. 394, contains a report of a paper communicated by the Rev. J. M. Mello to the Geological Society, on the 22nd June, 1870, on the above subject. On the 7th September, 1869, I had the honour to read a paper on the same subject to the Natural Science Section of the Nottingham Literary and Philosophical Society. Hence I beg to claim priority in publication on behalf of the above Society. Apart from this, I, of course, do not complain that Mr. Mello should happen to select a very interesting section like that in Tideswell Dale, no doubt being quite unaware that I had already published an account of the same. The sole, though rather dubious, deduction that the author is reported to have made, is “that the columnar clay-bed may perhaps be a local development of that which forms partings in the limestone near Litton Tunnel.”

The district selected for this article embraces a very unusual variety of geological phenomena, consisting of different kinds of recent gravels and Tertiary deposits, Greensand table-lands and patches, Triassic sandstone and conglomerate, rocks belonging to the interval between the Trias and uppermost Silurian strata, trap, and granite.

In the following pages, I am anxious briefly to make known certain new facts bearing on the history of the Crags which I have recently ascertained, and also to make some obervations on papers lately published relating to those beds.

It is a well-known fact that many islands in which there is no indigenous mammalian fauna, have been, and in some cases are still, inhabited by flightless birds, which are usually of considerable size. Mauritius and Rodriguez are good examples of such islands; in the former the dodo and aphanapteryx, in the latter the solitaire and erythromachus, existed at least as late as the beginning of the seventeenth century, when, owing to their inability to escape from their foes by flight, they fell easy victims to the crews of ships touching at the islands, and also to the various domestic animals, such as dogs, cats, and pigs, introduced by man.

The Old Red Sandstone occurs in Gower in several inliers which form hills rising above the undulating plateau of Carboniferous Limestone. The chief are Cefn-y-bryn (548 feet) in mid-Gower, Llanmadog Hill (609 feet), the westerly extension of Cefn-y-bryn in north-west Gower, and Rhosilli Down (633 feet) in the extreme west of Gower.

We study the largest exposed example of an early Cambrian palaeokarst, associated with laterites and developed during rifting of the Ossa–Morena Zone. The lithostratigraphy, biostratigraphy, facies and the genesis reflect episodes of sea-level fall (Cerro del Hierro Regression) related to tectonic events and palaeoclimate. This palaeokarst can be primarily considered as the result of early Cambrian polyphase karstification in an extensional tectonic regime, later modified by Neogene–Quaternary geomorphological processes. The event may correlate with other regressive events of a similar age in Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, South America and Australia. This episode also has local names (e.g. Cerro del Hierro Regression in the Mediterranean region; Woodlands Regression in the UK). It is sometimes accompanied by additional karst development outside of Spain that is compared and interpreted in a global context.

THIS paper describes the occurrence in Queensland of a large mass of limestone of late Palaeozoic age made up almost entirely of the microscopic remains of calcareous algae.

The Asenvågoya Conglomerate is a thin (c. 6 m) conglomeratic body composed of mass-flow deposits and enveloped by braided-stream sandstones and conglomerates. The section studied represents the proximal part of a small-radius alluvial fan built out from the basin margin towards a flood basin. The fan was possibly generated by escarpment creation, or rejuvenation, in response to syndepositional faulting along the basin margin, and comprises sand-matrix-supported and clast-supported, sheet-like conglomerates. There is an upward change through the sequence from stream flow and surging mass-flow, through fully turbulent mass-flow and sheet flow to cohesive mass-flow deposits and then a return of braided-stream alluvium at the top of the sequence. The fan wedge demonstrates the wide range of textures possible within a ‘mass-flow” system.

A previously undescribed series of outcrops which lies nearBishop's Castle, 3.2 km S of the Longmynd-Shelve Area of Salop (Shropshire), displays a relationship between the Western Uriconian tuffs, WentnorSeries ashy turbidites (both Pre-Cambrian) and Ludlow Series siltstones. This throws further light on the structure of the Pontesford-Linley Disturbance, indicating that, in the vicinity of the outcrops, a component of its movement may have been post Ludlow in age.

The well-known genus Trochammina was instituted in 1859 by Messrs. Parker and Jones as a sub-genus for the reception of an arenaceous foraminifer, the Rotalia (Nautilus) inflata of Montagu.