At St. Anne's-on-the-Sea, Lancashire, there are a great number of very large sand-hills. They are for the most part crateriform in the centre, from the gyratory movement of the wind in stormy weather. There must be some cause, however, which determines the course of the wind, for its natural action one would suppose should be to carry away dunes by sweeping them before it.

The labours of the late Admiral Spratt, R.N., and of the late Professor Leith Adams, F.B.S., in the cavern deposits of the Maltese Islands were rewarded by the finding of a unique and interesting land fauna, among which were Elephants, Hippopotami, Land-tortoises, gigantic Dormice, and aquatic Birds, the presence of whichinso limited an area was incompatible with the present existing physical conditions of the Islands. While carrying on his work of investigation in a cave in the Zebbug Gorge, Uied el Kbir,in1859, Spratt noticed that many of the remains of Elephants that were exhumed presented the appearance of having been fiercely gnawed, and later on when Adams was excavating the Mnaidra gap it was observed that many of the elephantine remains were in a similar condition.

In addition to the localities in Europe and N. America, another area for Tertiary Mammals has in very recent times been laid open to view in the Southern part of Argentina, which promises in the wealth of its contents to exceed those previously known. A few scattered remains from the Tertiary beds of the neighbourhood of Santa Cruz in Patagonia were already known more than forty years ago, but it is only lately, through the work of Burmeister and Moreno, and more particularly through the indefatigable researches of Florentino Ameghino, that a more complete insight into this very remarkable fauna has been obtained.

The genus Myalina was erected by Prof. De Koninck, in his Description des Animaux fossiles qui se trouvent dans le terrain Carbonifère de Belgique, for certain Modioliform shells, and M'Coy re-defined the genus in his British Palæozoic fossils and described two forms from the Permian of Durham.

Mr. Whiteaves in his description of this species mentions that “in one specimen there are indications of what looks like a short break or separation between the anterior and posterior portions of the dorsal (or between the two dorsals if there were two, which is scarcely probable), but this break may be owing to an accidental and abnormal fracture of the fin rays at this point, for in other specimens the two portions appear to be continuous.” This break is, however, represented in all his figures, including the restored sketch given in his second paper in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada.

In the course of the summer 1892, I had occasion to visit and examine the drainage area of the Lake of Zurich, including that of the Wallensee; and this gave rise to some interesting observations relating more especially to the origin of those lakes, to the high degree of purification of their waters by chemical and mechanical agency, and to some noteworthy effects of certain geological changes in their watersheds.

All students of British Glacial geology must feel that to Prof. James Geikie we owe much of our present knowledge concerning the Pleistocene succession in Europe; for he has not only been a zealous worker in the field, but has placed before us in a clear manner the valuable investigations of Continental geologists, with a view to showing how the succession that has been made out on the main land may be made to agree with that of our islands.

The great abundance and good preservation of the remains of the American Mastodon have led to various restorations of the skeleton. The best known of these is that made by Prof. Richard Owen, in 1846, based upon a skeleton from Missouri, now in the British Museum. Another restoration was made a few years later by Dr. J. C. Warren, based mainly on a very perfect skeleton from Orange county, New York. This skeleton is now preserved in the Warren Museum in Boston. A third restoration was made by Prof. James Hall, from a skeleton found at Cohoes, New York, and now in the State Museum of Natural History, in Albany. These restorations are all of importance, and taken together have made clear to anatomists nearly all the essential features of the skeleton of this well-known species.

It is now a recognized fact that many igneous intrusions, especially of basic rocks, grow more basic in composition from the centre to the margin. This type, of what Vogt terms “magmatic concentration,” has been discussed by several geologists, who agree in supposing that in such cases a magma, originally homogeneous, has become differentiated by the migration of the less soluble (more basic) ingredients to the cooler marginal region of the magma-reservoir.

The idea that the well-known shell-bearing sands of Moel Tryfaen indicate a submergence to the depth at which they are found, cannot perhaps be yet said to be, in the language of Mr. Dugald Bell, “a day-dream of the past,” though it is fast becoming so. Towards this result there must be two stages—disbelief in the submergence, and belief in something else. As to the first, Sir A. Ramsay wrote—“He must be a bold man who could see the shellbeds at Moel Tryfaen and deny that the sea had been there.”

The new school of glacial geology has found a champion in Mr. Percy Kendall, who,inten pages of this MAGAZINE (November, 1892, pp. 491–500), attempts a reply to some of my criticisms. Since then Dr. G. F. Wright's work, entitled “Man and the Glacial Period,” has made its appearance, and in this Mr. Kendall is allowed 44 pages to explain his views of the glacial phenomena of the British Isles.