The Archæan question in this country may be said to be about twelve years old. Rocks older than the Cambrian had indeed been recognized by Murchison and Sedgwick, and brief notices of Pre-Cambrian masses at St. Davids had been published by Salter, Harkness, and Hicks; but the Archæan campaign was formally opened by Dr. Hicks in a paper read before the Geological Society in November, 1876. The attack upon the old views was followed up by Prof. Bonney, the Rev. Edwin Hill, Prof. Hughes, and myself, and, more recently, by Prof. Lapworth and Prof. Blake. The defence has been conducted by Dr. A. Geikie. The controversy has been animated, and not without sensational incidents. Great diversity of opinion has existed even amongst the assailants, and many important divisions of the inquiry must be still regarded as unsettled.

Among the local Museums of recent foundation, it would be difficult to find one of more scientific interest and importance than that of the Malton Field Naturalists' and Scientific Society. The commencement of the collection, indeed, was made so lately, that it might naturally be expected to have attained little beyond the nucleus-stage; but as an exponent of local Natural History it already rivals many of the older Museums, and the object of the present notice is briefly to call the attention of palæontologists to the material it affords for all interested in the investigation of Jurassic and Cretaceous fossils.

Some years ago, in showing that the spines supposed by Hancock and Atthey to be dorsal spines of Gyracanthus were merely young and unworn specimens of lateral spines of the same genus, I called attention to the general fact that young examples of Selachian spines could not be expected to represent the older ones in miniature, and vice versa.

In May last I visited the Preston Hill Quarry, near Maidstone, in the company of the “Geological Field Class,” conducted by Professor Seeley, F.R.S., and took from it the specimen, the analysis of which is given below. In appearance the rock was a hard, grey, sandstone, containing fine quartz grains disseminated throughout its mass; its sp. gr. ═ 2.685; on the addition of an acid sulphuretted hydrogen was evolved, from the decomposition of calcium sulphide.

In a paper published in the Devonshire Transactions for 1888 (p. 215), Mr. Somervail suggests the identity of the chlorite schists of South Devon with certain rocks to the northward. As this hypothesis (could it be established) would have a most important bearing on subjects of controversy, I took the opportunity in a few days this winter, to visit and collect from these localities, including the dyke nearest to Toreross. I was not rewarded by finding any striking similarity to the metamorphic rocks of the south. In that series, the chlorite schists consist of clear and definite crystalline grains, among which I find felspar to be rare and have not yet certainly identified augite—while these northern greenstones are full of broken crystals of both minerals, together with viridite, dust resulting from the crushing, and a small amount of minute secondary hornblende and sericite (?), chlorite being generally rare, and often absent.

The paper by Mr. E. T. Newton “ On the Skull of Scaphognathus ” is one of the most important contributions to the morphology of the Pterosauria which has been published. There are a few poii however, which appear to me to need correction or a fuller explanati

1. The “prefontals,” Newton.

When Mr. Newton had the great kindness to show me specimen, which he had worked out with so much skill, I sugges to him that the bones called by him “ prefrontals ” (loc. cit. p. 5 were probably parts of the nasals only. It seems to me qi probable that this view is correct, and I give the following reaso

1. If the “prefrontals,” Newton, represented these bones, t] would have a position different from that in any other form ofMonocondylia, Haeckel, 1866 (Sauropsida, Huxley, 1869). T] would be placed inside of the nasals.

The rocks forming Housel Bay consist of the normal dark hornblende-schists with the exception of those out of which the charming little Cove bearing the same name has been formed, which holds nearly the central part of the Bay, facing the south-east.

In examining the remarkably fine series of examples of Cœlonautilus cariniferus, mostly from the Carboniferous Limestone of Ireland, contained in the Geological Collections of the British Museum (Nat. Hist.), some were found to exhibit upon the cast of the body-chamber distinct marks of the shell-muscles. In one specimen (No. 50190) these are so perfect as to give a very clear outline of their form, and some of the test having been removed, their entire course can be made out.

The genera Phillipsastræa and Smithia have long been a source of trouble to palæontologists, and since the establishment of the latter genus in 1851, it has been very doubtful in which of the two genera certain species of Corals should be placed. The more extended our acquaintance with the species belonging to both genera became, the more probable it seemed that the distinctions between them were in reality unimportant and insufficient to justify a division into two different genera. It was in fact proposed by Kunth as early as 1870 that both genera should be united under the earlier name Phillipsastræa. It has been stated that Phillipsastræa possesses a columella, while Smithia has none; upon the truth of this statement the retention of the two genera depends. Kunth has denied the existence of such a difference. Nevertheless both genera are still retained. From a careful study of the specimens in the British Museum (Natural History) and in the Woodwardian Museum at Cambridge, I have come to the conclusion that Kunth's opinion is well founded; and in the following remarks I shall further attempt to show that certain species which are still sometimes described as having a true columella do not really possess one.

A Paper on the Glaciation of Eastern Canada by the writer will shortly appear in the Canadian Record of Science, Montreal. It is intended to be a condensed statement of the principal facts hitherto collected on this interesting subject, with references to the reports and publications in which details are given. The following is an abstract which I send to the Geological Magazine in advance. The subject is regarded as an important one, and has occupied the attention of geologists for many years, as Eastern Canada is the battle ground, so to speak, of the advocates of the rival theories of continental glaciation and floating ice. The results thus far obtained from a somewhat careful study of its glacial phenomena, however, point to conclusions which are at variance with those held by extreme glacialists, and show that the theory of local glaciers upon the more elevated portions of the country and icebergs or floating ice striating the lower coastal areas during the Post-Tertiary submergence of these, as maintained by Sir William Dawson, will serve to explain all the observed phenomena.

In the last two British Association Reports of the Vesuvian Committee, I drew attention to some very large masses of trachyte traversed, at the back of Naples, by the tunnel of the Cumana Railway. A full account of the stratigraphy of these will be deferred until some further excavations, now in progress, are completed. I propose at present merely to describe the earliest-discovered and most striking of these masses.

In his memoir on “Modern Denudation,” Dr. A. Geikie determined approximately the number of years required by the following seven rivers to lower the general surface of their basins by one foot. He found that the Danube would take 6846 years, the Mississippi 6000, the Nith 4723, the Upper Ganges 2358, the Rhone 1528, the Hoang Ho 1464, and the Po 729, years. The average of these figures is 3378, and “this,” says Dr. Croll, in his recent interesting work on “Stellar Evolution” (p. 41), “gives a mean of 3378 years to remove one foot, or a little over one-half the time taken by the Mississippi.” As the mean rate of subaërial denudation is an important element in physical geology, it may be worth while to point out a slight mistake in this determination of its value, and also to show how a more correct estimate may, with our present data, be obtained.

Thirteen specimens of black shale, crowded with Ostracoda, besides fish-scales, Anthracomyæ (?), and other small fossils, were sent in 1886 by Mr. J. F. Whiteaves, F.G.S., Palæontologist of the Geological Survey of Canada, for examination. They had been collected by Mr. A. H. Foord, F.G.S., of that Survey, in 1881.

Having occasion in a work now in the press to refer to certain fossil Reptiles and Amphibians of which the commonly accepted nomenclature requires revision, I think it advisable to make the necessary amendments in a Journal specially devoted to Geology and Palæontology. I also take the opportunity of giving two new scientific names to Reptiles from the Wealden.

The mineral ottrelite, which has received so much attention elsewhere, especially in the Ardennes, and which is of considerable interest in connection with the metamorphism of certain rocks, has not, up to now, ever been reported as occurring anywhere in Great Britain.

I am able to state that I have discovered it in considerable amount in a certain roofing-slate of North Cornwall.