The oil regions of India lie in the north-west and in the east, within broad strips of Tertiary rocks stretching in a general southerly or south-westerly direction from the Himalayas to the sea. On the eastern side of India the main Tertiary outcrop runs from the head of the Assam Valley south-westwards through part of the Central Assam Range into the Surma Valley and thence southwards to the Bay of Bengal at Chittagong, whence the Tertiary beds continue along the Arakan Coast of Burma. This strip forms one geological province, distinct both from the better-known Tertiary development of western India and from the Tertiaries of the Chindwin–Irrawaddy Valley of Burma. This Assam–Arakan region includes parts of the provinces of Assam and Bengal and part of the western coast of Burma: although Burma is now separated from India, it is convenient to consider the Assam–Arakan oil-belt as a whole, without regard to political divisions.

In an earlier paper in this magazine it was stated that we were then engaged on a general study of the Yorkshire Dogger. This subject has proved to be so complicated and far-reaching that it is not possible to present all the results in a single paper of any reasonable length. Moreover, as will be seen later, owing to noteworthy local changes in lithology of the Dogger and to its stratigraphical relations certain very definite types can be recognized, characteristic of large and well-marked areas. This feature lends itself readily to serial publication and the present paper deals with the most accessible, if not perhaps the most interesting area, namely the coast from Peak (Ravenscar) to Saltburn. This part of the outcrop is referred to for convenience as the coastal Dogger.

The Dogger of the coast from Peak to Kettleness is essentially a sideritic sandstone, and except in the Sandsend-Mulgrave district, is entirely unfossiliferous. This type of coast Dogger is well exposed at Hawsker Bottoms. To the naked eye it is a brownish sandstone of fine grain with very abundant white specks, a few small lenses of pale grey mudstone, and a very small number of bright green grains. Under the microscope it is seen to be a fairly well-graded sandstone with a few larger clastic elements, including both quartz and felspar as well as those mentioned above. The quartz grains are extraordinarily angular, doubtless due to corrosion by the matrix, and many of them are compound, i.e. microquartzites of various kinds. Felspar, mainly orthoclase and perthite, is abundant. A few flakes of chloritic chamosite and still more rare grains of typical speckled glauconite represent the green grains mentioned above. The matrix is somewhat oxidized, but still shows the usual well-formed rhombohedra of siderite, most of them with darker cores. The most notable point is that the sand grains rarely touch and are often widely spaced in the matrix, indicating simultaneous deposition of clastic elements and matrix, which is not a cement in the usual sense (Text-fig. 5). In this and in subsequent papers the term “ cement ” is used to connote that interstitial bonding material subsequently added to a bed of incoherent detrital grains which were lying in contact with each other before its infiltration : “ matrix ” is used for that interstitial material between detrital grains which are not in contact and which was therefore deposited contemporaneously with them, forming a part of the original sea floor deposit.

Matthew's provisional classification of the freshwater Tertiary of Western America in 1899 was succeeded ten years later by a detailed correlation of the American Tertiary Mammal horizons with those of Europe, published by Osborn and himself in 1909. At that time these authors placed the Pikermi horizon of Europe (Pontian) in the Upper Miocene and the Val d'Arno horizon (Villafranchian) in the Upper Pliocene. They in common with many later writers subsequently adopted a Lower Pliocene and Pleistocene age respectively for the two horizons named. Allowing for this change of view, Osborn's and Matthew's correlation has been substantially followed, with a few modifications due to individual opinion, by all later authorities. The reasons for it were somewhat elaborated by Osborn in his Age of Mammals (1910). It is evident that the Equidae formed the basis for it. The appearance of the genera Anchitherium (as species of Kalobatippus and Hypohippus were then named), Hipparion and Equus in North America were assumed to be approximately contemporaneous with their appearance in Europe. That North America was at any rate the main, if not the exclusive radiative centre for the distribution of the Equidae has been universally acknowledged. Hence Osborn's and Matthew's choice of this group as a standard of age seemed to be fully justified. In accordance with it the first Hipparion beds of North America were regarded as Pontian.

In 1907 there appeared a memoir by F. W. Harmer, in which he suggested that a number of gorges—those at Malton and Ironbridge among them—might have originated as spillways consequent upon the blocking of the natural line of drainage by glaciers. A few years previously, Professor Kendall (1902) had interpreted some abandoned valleys in Yorkshire on the same hypothesis; a further exposition was given by Kendall and Wroot in 1924. In the present paper we propose a more fundamental origin for these channels.

Scarcely any information has been published regarding the palaeontological sequence in the Coal Measures of South Staffordshire. Some marine bands have been recorded (summarized in Whitehead, 1927, p. 31) and there are isolated records of non-marine lamellibranchs, including a number which were figured by Wheelton Hind (1894–6). Practically nothing is known, however, concerning the zonal succession of either the shells or plants in that area. Recently, through the kindness of Dr. C. J. Stubblefield, the writer has had an opportunity to study a small collection of shells obtained in South Staffordshire by the late H. W. Hughes and now in the Museum of the Geological Survey. The specimens have been collected from known horizons and have proved to be sufficient to enable the writer to fix zonal boundaries and thus to make some suggestions regarding the correlation of the marine horizons.

Widespread over England and Wales there are superficial deposits of a structureless and rubbly character that can be classed neither with true glacial deposits nor with river drifts. These are especially noticeable beyond the southern limit of glaciation, but they also occur, with less frequency, within the glaciated regions. Geologists in the early part of the last century, unhampered by pre-conceived ideas, frequently described such deposits, and in 1839 De la Beche, probably adopting a quarryman's term for overburden, gave certain occurrences the name Head. In later years Pleistocene classification, embracing both glacial and river drifts, took little or no account of these apparently irregular accumulations. Only those cases that presented special characters or were extensive and thick were shown, under a variety of names, upon geological maps.

A study of the fossil vertebrate fauna of the Wady el-Mughara caves was published in 1937 (Bate, 1937), but at that time it had not been found possible to carry out an intensive examination of the antelope remains, except for the purpose of making the first record of a fossil hartebeest in Palestine. This omission was due partly to lack of sufficient time and partly to the fact that the specimens were generally in a very fragmentary state of preservation. Nevertheless, since remains of gazelles, together with those of Dama mesopotamica, occurred throughout the cave leveis and were more plentiful than those of other species it was found practical to make use of these two types as climatic indicators, while other species were used as a control (Bate, 1937, fig. 1).

The country in the vicinity of Toodyay, which is situated approximately 60 miles north-east from Perth, is occupied by a series of Archaeozoic metasedimentary and igneous rocks (Text-fig. 1). The metasediments include interbedded sillimanite-and andalusite-mica-schists, extremely pure quartzites and occasional narrow bands of calc-silicate rocks. The igneous rocks occur as (1) narrow bands of schistose plagioclase-amphibolite (interbedded with the metasediments) which appear to have been originally sills or flows of tholeiitic character; (2) wider bands of fluxion microcline- (and oligoclase-) granite-gneisses occurring as concordant thick sill-like bodies in the metasedimentary strata; (3) Quartz-dolerite dykes, intrusive into all the above-mentioned rocks. Some of these rocks, which are developed in the Jimperding valley (about 6 miles southwest from Toodyay), have been previously described (Prider, 1934).

Four samples were sent to me by Mr. A. Farrington, two pairs collected from separate boulder clays, in each of two localities. The purpose was to investigate whether it would be possible to differentiate the two clays by their respective content of microfossils.

In a recent memoir (Holmes and Harwood, 1937, p. 276) I had occasion to point out that “one of the most remarkable features of the igneous activity of late Cretaceous and early Tertiary times is the geochemical and petrological contrast between the kimberlite and olivine-melilitite which perforated the crust of Southern Africa and the widespread outpourings of olivine-basalt and basalt (often followed by acid rocks) in many other parts of the world”. An essentially similar contrast is found in the more recent and more localized volcanic fields of the Western Rift of Africa. The Toro-Ankole fields of multiple vents, east and south-east of Ruwenzori, are characterized throughout by undersaturated potassic types, free from felspar; whereas in the great lava fields south of Lake Kivu the dominant lavas are olivine-basalts of various types. Between these two strongly contrasted provinces, and in some respects sharing the characters of each, the Birunga field (including Bufumbira) extends across the Rift north of Lake Kivu. Although many of the lavas of this field contain abundant plagioclase and look like basalts, they have been found, with few exceptions, to be potassic types ranging from leucite-basanites to basanitoid trachybasalts. True basalts appear to be absent (Holmes and Harwood, 1937, pp. 16–18), the nearest approach to basalt—geographically as well as petrographically—being certain trachybasalts and limburgites from the south of the field, which differ from the other rocks of Birunga in having more soda than potash.

Fuller's Earth was first recorded at the surface in the core of the Weymouth anticline by Damon (1860, p. 12). It was mapped by the Geological Survey in a semi-elliptical area south of Langton Herring, having a sea coast of about 1¼ miles on the West Fleet (1 inch map, sheet 341). The chief feature of interest is a lumachelle or oyster bed composed of a mass up to some 12 feet thick of the small oyster, Ostrea hebridica Forbes (= 0. sowerbyi Morris and Lycett), the var. elongata Dutertre predominating (see Damon, 1860 and 1884, p. 12, fig. 3). The oyster was recorded by Damon and by Strahan (1898, p. 5, and sheet 341) as O. acuminata J. Sowerby, but that species belongs to a lower horizon, below the Fuller's Earth Rock. The Langton Herring oyster bed, which is seen also at Watton Cliff near Bridport, lies in the Upper Fuller's Earth, above the Fuller's Earth Rock, which does not come to the surface in the Weymouth anticline. The lowest beds exposed in the anticline, for a few feet below the oyster bed, are tough clays with mudstone nodules and abundant Rhynchonella smithi (Davidson) (see Arkell, 1933, p. 252). With the Rhynchonellids there weather out also abundant fragments of a typical Fuller's Earth belemnite, which I follow some French authors in calling Belemnopsis bessina (d'Orb.).

The sac-like structures occasionally found in association with graptolite rhabdosomes have always attracted the attention of palaeontologists whenever recognized. They have very generally been regarded as of reproductive character, though in some cases doubt has been held as to whether they were really attached to the rhabdosome; any specimens showing attachment beyond the possibility of doubt are therefore valuable, and in the case of the specimens now figured this attachment is particularly clear.

It is now some thirty-two years since any observations on the Geology of Basutoland have been made. The Rev. S. S. Dornan of the French Protestant Mission may be considered to be the only serious contributor and he published three short articles on the geology during the period 1905–8. The writer was invited by the Colonial Office to carry out a reconnaissance geological survey of the territory, and the following notes may be considered a summary of his general observations.

The Near East is steadily growing in importance as an oil producing region. Present annual production-rates in the various countries are (in round figures) as follows. S.W. Iran 10,000,000 tons, Iraq 4,000,000 tons, Bahrein and the N.E. coast of Arabia 1,000,000 tons, Egypt 600,000 tons. In addition, recently discovered oil-fields are being developed, and active exploration of extensive areas is proceeding in these countries and in Syria, Palestine, and Sinai. The oil possibilities of this immense region are, naturally, not of equal order throughout, but a success in one area draws attention to all geologically related provinces, at least for first-stage exploration.

This work was undertaken in an attempt to assess the significance of minor variations in composition and properties of sand samples collected from the same locality and derived from a common source.

A series of Recent volcanic ashes and tuffs from various parts of Malaya has been examined on behalf of the Director of the Geological Survey, F.M.S., in order to test the reported occurrence of marine sponge spicules in certain of these deposits (cf. J. B. Scrivenor, 1930, A Recent Rhyolite-ash with Sponge-spicules and Diatoms in Malaya, Geol. Mag., lxvii, 385–393, pls. xxii, xxiii). If such an occurrence were confirmed it might be taken as evidence of very considerable changes in sea-level within recent times, since at one locality the deposits yielding the supposed spicules reach an elevation of 500 feet above M.S.L. (see Willbourn, Rep. Geol. Surv. Dept. F.M.S. for 1937 (1938), PP. 8–10).

My paper on The succession and metamorphism of the Mona Complex 1 contains (p. 339) an error of some importance, which I have long desired to correct.