From the “Annals of British Geology,” 1892, No. 533, p.294, I find that Prof. T. Bonney doubts the occurrence of sandgrains in the Guspis micaceous gneiss, as stated by me in various reports on the geology of the St. Gothard Tunnel, and repeated on p. 17 of my “Remarks on Prof. Bonney's paper on the Crystalline Schists and their relation to the Mesozoic rocks in the Lepontine Alps.” The question being of some general interest, and not only of importance for the comprehension and classification of the crystalline schists in the Lepontine Alps, I think it desirable to repeat here the observed facts, and to present to the notice of the readers of the Geological Magazine some autotype prints of the rockinquestion. I am the only geologist who has seen these bedsinsitu, when they were opened by the St. Gothard Tunnel; and it would be rather difficult for anyone to make out their outcrops along the line of profile through the Guspis Valley and below the actual moraine of the St. Anna glacier, without taking into consideration the faults and thrusts in this tract, which are indicated on my geological map of the St. Gothard Railway and on the profile of the tunnel.

When working amongst the rocks of Lakeland, one is often confronted with problems connected with the superficial features of the country, and as some of these are of more than local interest I propose to notice them from time to time.

Church Beck, flowing in a south-easterly direction from the eastern slopes of the Old Man range, passes through Coniston Valley to discharge its waters into the head of Coniston Lake, not far from the point of entrance of the more important Yewdale Beck, which flows through the wide valley of Yewdale in a southerly direction. Church Beck, on the other hand, flows through, an upland valley, and is joined by the union of Low Water, Lever's Water, and the Red Dell Becks. Walking up its banks from Coniston Village, one presently comes upon an exposure of the Skelgill graptolitic shales at a height of about 225 feet above sealevel. Above this, one rapidly mounts the hill, and passing a considerable waterfall, reaches Gill Head Bridge at a height of about 540 feet. Above this is an alluvial flat extending to the Coniston copper works at the junction of the Red Dell Beck with that formed by the union of Lever's Water and Low Water Becks. The bottom of this alluvial valley is occupied by stratified deposits, formed by the washings of the copper works, which will, of course, not be confused with the much older deposits about to be described.

In the extreme northernmost part of Canada, lying between North Latitudes 56° and 68° and West Longitudes 88° and 112°, is an area of about 400,000 square miles, which had up to the past two years remained geologically unexplored.

In 1892 the Director of the Geological Survey of Canada sent the writer to explore the country north of Churchill River, and south-west of Lake Athabasca;in1893 the exploration was continued northward, along the north shore of Athabasca Lake

The genus Elotherium, established by Pomelin1847, represents a family of extinct mammals, all of much interest. They were first foundinEurope, but now are known in the Miocene of North America, not only on the Atlantic coast, but especially in the Rocky Mountain region, and still further west. This family includes several genera, or subgenera, and quite a number of species, some of which contain individuals of large size, only surpassed in bulk among their contemporaries by members of the Rhinoceros family, and of the huge Brontotherid

The specimens which form the subject of this paper were obtained by Mr. E. J. Garwood from the Carboniferous Limestone of Stebden Hill, near Cracoe, Yorkshire; and the writers are indebted to the kindness of Mr. Garwood for permission to describe them. Respecting the horizon and locality from which the species came, Mr. Garwood says, in a letter to one of the writers: “Stebden is a hill which Tiddeman [of the Geological Survey] describes as one of his knoll reefs

Being present at the reading of the abstract of my friend Prof. Brögger's paper at the last meeting of the British Association, and having listened to certain laudations thereon, I, with several others, went away with the profound conviction that our Scandinavian colleague was about to bring down upon us a mass of evidence bearing on the differentiation of rocks as irresistible and overwhelming as that of his Viking ancestors in times gone by.

There have been many suggestions respecting a continental connection of the West Indies, but this is the first attempt made to restore the Antillean lands. It is based upon the slowly accumulating evidence of great systems of submerged valleys, or fjords extending from the commonly buried lower reaches of all the great rivers, upon the terrestrial deformation involved in the changes of level over large regions and upon the distribution of the characteristic forms of life. The present investigations confirm and amplify the history of the coastal plain of the northern continent.

To the west of the London and North-Western Eailway, after it has surmounted the incline of Shap Fells, lies the valley of the Eiver Lowther, which eventually flows into the Eamont, whichinturn drains into the Eden. The Lowther, flowing in a general northerly direction, receives the drainage of three important streams, coming from the south-west. The first of these flows through the valley of Wet Sleddale, just north of the Fells, which exhibit the exposures of the Shap Granite. It is lettered W.S.inFig. 1. The second, Swindale (S. Fig. 1), the subject of this paper, joins the Lowther stream at Kossgill Hamlet, about two miles north of Shap Village, whilst the third, Haweswater Beck (H.B. Fig. 1), flows out of Haweswater (H. Fig. 1) and joins the Lowther at Bampton.

Proceeding up Swindale from Eossgill, we follow the road over Eossgill Moor, a barren tract of country occupied by Skiddaw Slates, to Swindale Foot, near which the Borrowdale Volcanic Group appears, and causes the fine cliff scenery which marks the upper part of Swindale.

After this substance has been well observed in good occurrences, it is always recognized at once, even as isolated small patches in a slide. It has a very characteristic appearance among the other constituents. It is marked off, for instance, by its special refraction from anything else that occurs in these rocks, and has other characteristics not to be missed when once observed, but not very easy to exactly describe. As soon as it ceases to be quite inert in polarized light, as soon as the speckly polarization sets in, it has also a more or less granular appearance in ordinary light with lowered condenser, which is very characteristic.indifferent slides, and often in one and the same slide, various stages of development may be observed in it from the first speckled appearance in polarized light up to a point where flakelets of white mica are recognized as forminginit, lying “criss-cross”inall directions. It passes in this way in some cases almost wholly into mica, with apparently other substances which cannot be identified with certainty, the transition, and connection with the original substance, being all the time distinct and beyond mistake.

In the inner zones, the “hornfels-zones,“ this substance is usually present in smaller amount, as already stated; but examples of its abundant occurrence are not wanting, as for instance in a hornfels from Spitzenberg, in the Harz. There is a mosaic of quartz and felspar, with brown mica and some white mica. The yellow substance lies in amongst, and surrounds, the minerals of this mosaic. It has no definite form of its own, simply occupying spaces and taking the outlines of the other minerals. It is all either in the minutely-speckly stage or variously developed from this upwards to mica; and the impression made is that if it had all developed as far as some portions of it have done, the whole mosaic-grains of the slides would be mixed in with and surrounded by white mica, as may not infrequently be observed in these contact-rocks.

Prof. Krasnov states that the decomposition of the roots of plants gives rise to the humus, but attaches much more importance to the effect of climatic conditions. Thus, he remarks, “that it is impossible not to note that the Tchernozem occupies a band stretching from S.W. to N.E., that is, the position where the influence of a temperate and moist climate ends, and the region of dry S.E. winds begins. In the N. and N.W. of Russia the woods predominate, unless destroyed by man, or prevented by the marshy nature of the country.

It might well appear that the labours of Kowalevsky and Filhol had so completely determined the structure of this genus, that nothing of importance remained to add to their results; but this is very far from being the case. The European material, found principally at Hempstead and at Konzon, near PuyinFrance, is so scattered that its proper association is a matter of great difficulty, and errors are unavoidable.

Mr. J. B. Hatcher, AssistantinGeology, and one of the Curators of this Museum, has during the past two summers been engagedincollecting from the Oligocene beds of South Dakota, and among many other treasures has obtained several all but complete skeletons of Ancodus, belonging to the species which Osborn and Wortman have lately named A. (Hyopotamus) brachyrhynchus. This material proves to be of great interest and importance, and will be fully described in an illustrated monograph which is soon to appear. The object of the present preliminary notice is to call attention to some of the more striking characteristics of this curious animal.

The American species of Ancodus present certain constant differences from the European members of the genus. (1) The muzzle is not drawn out into such an extraordinary rostrum; (2) The skull has greater vertical height, though this difference may be due in part to the crushing which the Ronzon specimens have undergone; (3) The coronoid process of the lower jaw is much more prominent and more decidedly recurved.

There has been a long and sustained discussion among geologists as to whether the Mammoth and its companions were pre-Glacial, inter-Glacial, or post-Glacial, or whether they could not,infact, claim to have been both pre- and post-Glacial, and to have lived through the Glacial age, whence the name of Dicyclotherium proposed for the Mammoth by one writer.

I was not present when Dr. Callaway's last paper on the Malvern Rocks was read before the Geological Society, and had not the Opportunity of joining in the discussion that followed the reading of the paper.The author has now given his views regarding the “Conversion of Chlorite into Biotite;” in a condensed form in the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE (Dec. 1893, p. 535), and has expressly invited criticism on them; I venture, therefore,inresponse to this invitation, to give expression to a difficulty that presents itself to my mind.

It is not necessary to enter into a discussion of the authorities quoted by Dr. Callaway; but I remark in passing that two of the papers referred to prefess to deal with cases of contact metamorphism, and consequently the conditions that must have prevailedinthose cases are altogether different from those which govern Dr. Callaway's supposed case of dynamo-metamorphism.incases of contact action one can readily understand how aqueous acid vapours, or liquids, emanating from the molten igneous rock under high pressure penetrated the adjoining rocks, and carried with them in solution some of the constituents of the igneous magma.

Having been honoured by an invitation to state to your Society the physical principles upon which my Theory of the Origin of Mountain Ranges is founded, I do so with the greater pleasure knowing that it will receive a searching criticism at your hands, from which I hope to derive considerable benefit. My audience hitherto having been mostly geological, the physical principles involved have been to some extent subordinated to geological conditions.

In a collection of vertebrate remains from the south-west coast of Madagascar, recently received in the British Museum, there occur numerous bones belonging to, at least, three species of Æpyornis. Among them are two tibio-tarsi, right and left, of gigantic size, much larger than any hitherto described. Both these bones are, unfortunately, considerably damaged at the upper end, the right one alone showing any portion of the proximal articular surface. They both, without doubt, belong to the same species, though probably not to the same individual. The left, which on the whole, is the better preserved, may be taken as the type of the species which it is proposed to call Æpyornis titan.

Up to the year 1867 the only traces of organisms that had been found in the beds then classed as Cambrian by the Geological Survey (now Lower and part of Middle Cambrian of most authors) were tracks and burrows of Annelids; and the doubtful Trilobite Palæopyge found by Mr. Salterinthe Longmynd rocks of Shropshire.in“Siluria”, fourth edition, 1867, p. 30, Sir R. Murchison refers to them as follows: “These, then, are the only signs of former life we have yet become acquainted with after the most assiduous researches in the Cambrian deposits of such vast dimensions, which are often, I repeat, less altered than much younger rocks replete with organic remains”

As Western Australia is attracting considerable notice on account of the recent rich gold discoveries, a short paper upon its geological formations may be of interest.

Regarded as a whole, Western Australia is not an interesting field for geological research, at any rate from a stratigraphical or palasontological point of view, for, with the exception of one or two districts in the north, all the rock-outcrops are either granites, crystalline schists, or volcanic dykes.

Every geologist is familiar with the name of Storeton Quarry, which may fitly be termed the “home of the Cheirotherium”, celebrated as being the scene of the earliest discoveryinEngland of the fossil footprints, first described by Messrs. John Cunningham and James Yatesin1839.

Fifty years' study of these footprints has left their origin, so faras exact identification with any known animal is concerned, a matter of as much mystery as when Sir Eichard Owen gave attention to the subject in his classical work on “Palaeontology”.

All the Selachian teeth hitherto obtained from the English. Crags referable to the genus Oxyrhina are much compressed antero-posteriorly, and are thus slender in proportion to their size. They are now commonly regarded as representing a single extinct species, Oxyrhina hastalis of Agassiz, and the same form of dentition is abundant in the Pliocene of Italy, besides occurringinother Tertiary deposits in various parts of the world.inItaly and Belgium, however, these comparatively slender teeth are accompanied by a few others of the same genus of very robust proportions; and some of these have received the names of O. Benedeni, O. gibbosissima, and O. Forestii, while others have been identified with O. crassa and O. quadrans. So far as the present writer can judge, none of these robust teeth are capable of being satisfactorily distinguished from the species O. crassa of Agassiz, originally described from the Miocene of the Rhine Valley; and it is under the last-mentioned name that they are recorded in the British Museum Catalogue.

Much light has been thrown of late years on the history of gneiss and other foliated rocks. Geological literature is beginning to bristle with such terms as regional–metamorphism, pressure–metamorphism, dynamo–metamorphism, and the like. Yet longer and less intelligible names will probably follow, which, under the guise of precision, will foster confusion. So it may be a little help to students to set down, as far as possible in plain English, the fruits of some years' study of gneisses and allied rocks.inthis work I have taken nothing on trust, and have tested every inference to the best of my ability. Probably there is nothing original in the results, but they are all the outcome of personal observation, for I have always preferred questioning Nature to reading books. So,inorder to economize time in searching for what has been already said, and to save studding the page with references, I will assure the reader that he is quite at liberty to suppose that “everything has been said by somebody, somewhere.”

Let us begin our observations with a rock which is a fairly coarse granite, occurring in a region affected by great earth-movements, such as mountain-making, which, however, for some reason or wither, has escaped with its structure practically unmodified. Such a rock sometimes may be locally indistinguishable from an ordinary granite, but very commonly a small difference is perceptible, especially on a slightly weathered surface. This has a rather fragmental aspect, the quartz and the felspar presenting a superficial resemblance to unrolled clastic grains,—asinan arkose, the materials of which have been transported only for a short distance. This resemblance does not disappear on microscopic examination. The rock,inshort, has been fractured but not crushed. This structure is exhibited (not to mention other examples) locally in the granite at the entrance of the Yal Rosegg (Pontresina), in the granitoid rock of Twt Hill(Carnarvon), and of Llanfaelog (Anglesey); occasionally also in the so-called Dimetian of St. Davids. This, then, may be regarded as the first stage in pressure-modification.