The Green Ammonite Beds of the Lias (called also the Wear Cliff Beds in the latest Survey publication on Lyme Regis) include the clays with occasional limestones that lie between the Belemnite Stone below and the lowest of the Three Tiers above. The lowest Tier contains ammonites of the margaritatus group, and the Belemnite Stone caps the top beds of the Belemnite Marls that may be placed in the ibex-valdani zone. So the Green Ammonite Beds may be said to constitute the upper part of such of the Pliensbachian or Charmouthian as lies below the Domerian. Buekman has applied the term ‘Charmouthian’ to this lower portion, thus restricting the term to a part only of what it originally included. I have already advocated the propriety of applying the term Charmouthian strictly with its original connotation, and would call those zones of it that lie below the Domerian,—Bonarelli's ‘Charmoutiano inferiore’—which certainly need an inclusive name, Carixian. The fullest published accounts of the Green Ammonite Beds are those in the Survey Memoirs, and may be summarized as follows: They extend from Black Ven on the west to Seatown on the east; traces only appear on Black Ven; the complete series occurs on Stonebarrow, though there “only the lower portion is well-exposed”; their thickness is about 100 feet, though variable, and as much as 125 feet to the east of Golden Cap; they consist of marly clays with ‘ferruginous bands’ and nodular limestones.

The Scandinavian Promontory. — This remarkable promontory, extending for over a thousand miles from the Naze to the North Cape, is formed mainly of Archæan rocks, consisting of gneiss, crystalline schists, and other metamorphic rocks, penetrated by granite and other igneous dykes of later date. These primeval rocks are overlain throughout a portion of their extent by Cambrian and Lower Palæozoic (or Lower Silurian) beds, between which and the Archaean masses there is entire discordancy, and, as regards their respective ages, a long period of unrepresented time. The Palæozoic beds are themselves highly altered when in contact with the intrusive igneous masses, so that it is difficult to distinguish them from the more ancient masses in some districts.

In attempting an explanation of the structure of Western Cornwall it seems fairly evident that the first step should be a study of the coast sections, for the interior of the country is so folded and buckled that it is quite bewildering in its complexity. The natural sections most useful for this purpose are those of Black Head to Gorran Haven, St. Michael Carhayes to the Dodman, Falmouth to the Manacles, and Trewavas to Mullion, since all these sections cross the lines of strike more or less at right angles. It soon becomes abundantly clear that the complexity of folding exhibited by the rocks is but the detail of greater movements and need not seriously detain us. In 1908 Upfield Green expressed our views on those greater movements in the ninety-fifth report of the Trans. Roy. Geol. Soc. Cornwall, and endeavoured to show that the great Hercynian movements had involved Cornwall, throwing the country into three east and west anticlinals with sinuous outcrops, which anticlinals had gradually been forced over to the north into overfolds. These folds have been further complicated, distorted, and confused by local minor bucklings shown by the strata on every side.

Solenopora.—The discovery of this genus in the Lower Carboniferous rocks of Westmorland is of considerable interest, as its occurrence here gives us some insight into the history of its wanderings between the time when we last recorded it in the Gotlandian rocks of the Baltic area and its subsequent reappearance in the Lower Oolite of Gloucestershire. Whether it lived in the Baltic area during the Devonian and Carboniferous periods is, however, still unknown. The fact of its occurrence in the Caradoc, Carboniferous, and Jurassic rocks of the British Isles would appear to point to its existence not far off during the intervening periods.

Although the Rhætic beds are not exposed continuously along the eastern boundary of the Keuper outcrop, they have been proved at many points from the River Trent in the north on the Nottinghamshire border to Glen Parva in the south. South of this point there is so much drift, and borings within the Liassic outcrop have been so isolated or shallow, that there is a gap in our knowledge of the intervening ground between the last point and the Rugby district. The Countesthorpe boring, carried to a depth of over 600 feet, encountered Upper Keuper beneath the Drift, with no intervening Rhætics. Commencing in the north in the Gotham district the two outliers are capped above the Red Marl and Tea-green Marl with Rhætic beds, and Lower Lias Limestone (Ps. planorbe zone) above. At Ash Spinney at the south end of the southern outlier, and at the east end of Crownend Wood, Black Shales with Avicula contorta crop out; and on the west side septaria are seen. On the north-west side of the northern outlier at Cottager's Hill Protocardium phillipianum has been found in a well-section near the lane. Rhætic shales are seen in the shafts driven for gypsum works about Gotham.

Some years ago Mr. D. M. S. Watson and I collected, from the Carboniferous Limestone of Clitheroe, Lancashire, a considerable series of Echinoids. One slab of the limestone (measuring 16 × 12 cm.) is covered by a great number of disjointed plates and other skeletal fragments of a large Perischodomus, probably P. bliserialis, M'Coy. Dr. R. T. Jackson refers to the specimen (Phylogeny of the Echini, p. 406), and, as the jaw fragments show features not hitherto described for the genus, it seems advisable to give a brief account of it. The preservation of a compass is a point of special interest, as these delicate structures are known in very few cases in the fossil state.

The Geological Magazine for February contained a lengthy criticism by Mr. R. M. Brydone of my article on the Recognition of Two Stages in the Upper Chalk, in the volume for last year. It is certainly curious that he should set himself the task of adverse criticism in such a voluminous fashion when he acknowledges at the outset that he sympathizes with my proposal. It appears, however, that he is dissatisfied with my reference to his work, and that he doubts the reliability of my lists of fossils from the new zones of Offaster pilula and Actinocamax quadratus.

Lystrosaurus, Cope = Ptychognathus, Owen (non Stimpson), has long been known from isolated but often perfectly preserved skulls. Quite recently the reception of a magnificent skeleton by the Albany Museum, Grahamstown, enabled me to give a restoration of the animal. In this drawing the hand and foot were drawn from incomplete non-associated remains. Whilst travelling in South Africa, with the aid of a grant from the Percy Sladen Trustees, I collected on the farm Klip-kuil a fragmentary skeleton of Lystrosaurus, much of which was so rotten that it could not be preserved, but which included a complete left fore-limb. This was developed by myself and was found to lie in its natural position with the digits very strongly flexed, except that the metacarpals were slightly separated laterally. It is represented in Text-fig. 1, with the humerus, radius, and ulna in the position in which they were found, and with the fingers extended. The humerus is not very well preserved, but agrees exactly with the excellent example figured by Owen, Catalogue of South African Fossil Reptiles. It is of the usual Anomodont type, with a very powerful deltoid crest extending half-way down the shaft, and a much expanded lower end with a large entepicondyle. There is a large entepicondylar foramen,

Mr. Jukes-Browne, F.R.S., in a paper entitled “The Making of Torbay”, which has recently appeared in the Trans. Devon Assoc. for 1912, incidentally refers to the Raised Beaches of Torbay as follows: “The age of these beaches has been fairly well settled by the determination of the date of similar beaches in South Wales … the beaches testify to a subsidence which culminated either just before or during the epoch of maximum glaciation” (Trans. Devon Assoc. 1912, p. 726).

In a very interesting article on the Geology of Bermuda, published in this Magazine for September and October, 1911 (pp. 385–95 and 433–42, Pls. XVIII–XXIII), the late Rev. R. Ashington Bullen states, on p. 390, that Admiral's Cave at Spanish Point is in the Walsingham Formation. This statement is evidently due to a slip in map-reading, Admiralty Cove being the boat harbour of Admiralty House near Spanish Point, whereas the Admiral's Cave, whencethe Pœcilozonites nelsoni in the British Museum were derived, is the “cave near the calabash-tree” mentioned on p. 439. This cave owes its name to the visit of Admiral Milne, and the base of his stalagmite is still in evidence, bearing his tool marks. It is one of the largest and most remarkable of the many caves between Bailey's Bay and Tuckerstown.

More than twenty years ago, whilst engaged in the study of the Lower Carboniferous rocks of Westmorland, I noticed the occurrence of certain small concretionary nodules of very compact texture in the dolomites near the base of the succession in the neighbourhood of Shap.

This district is bounded on the north by the Coalville and Ashby line, on the west and south by the county boundaries, on the east by the Shackerstone and Market Bosworth lines. In the north are exposures of Coal-measures, Permian breccias, and Bunter, which the Trias in turn rests upon unconformably. The Lower Keuper forms a long tract on the west not more than two miles in breadth, forming a good feature, the sandstones giving rise to scarps, whilst the Red Mail occupies the rest of the district to the east. On the south-west beds of sandstone form marked features, which also give rise to bold escarpments, whilst the Red Marl itself constitutes a uniform plateau with little or no variation in heights. There are few exposures in the marls, which on the extreme east are covered by a mantle of Boulder-clay and sands. The River Sence and the Sence Brook, however, cut down to the lower parts of the Red Marl, and a good deal of alluvium fills the valleys to the south. The altitude over most of this ground rises uniformly above 300 feet, and in some parts to over 400, rarely sinking below 250. A ridge of hills is formed by the Orton Sandstone striking north-west and south-east, and another ridge meets it at right angles from Market Bosworth.

The Cretaceous formation of Bahia, first brought prominently to notice by the discoveries of Allport in 1859, has been in great part examined and described by the late Professor Hartt, by Dr. O. A. Derby, by Dr. B,. Rathbun, and by Dr. J. C. Branner. Some additional observations made by the present writer were published in the Geological Society's Journal of May, 1907, to accompany Dr. A. Smith Woodward's paper on the Vertebrate Fossils of the formation.

The species described in this paper is based on specimens acquired for the Geological Department of the British Museum in 1912 from Professor C. Klouček, of Prague, who collected them from the upper portion of D γ (=Arenigian) at Šárka and Malé Prilepy. The fossil was referred in the first instance by Professor Klouček to “Chiton sp. ?” and the result of the present investigation has been to uphold the reference to the Polyplacophora, though the precise generic status must remain vague.

Of the various minerals which enter into the composition of igneous rocks, about one-half are capable of forming in presence of free silica, as is shown by their association in rocks with quartz and tridymite. These may, for the present purpose, be termed saturated minerals; they include some of the most highly silicated compounds of their respective metallic elements. The remaining rock minerals do not appear in association with free silica, and may be presumed to be incapable of stable existence in its presence; they are mostly the less highly silicated compounds of the same metallic elements which, enter into the former group. These may, for the present purpose, be, termed unsaturated minerals. The unsaturated character of any mineral in the latter group is not affected by the temperature and pressure at which crystallization takes place; this is shown by the fact that quartz and the minerals referred to are mutually exclusive both in plutonic and in effusive rocks. In the case of sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium the formation of saturated or unsaturated minerals appears to depend only on the amount of silica available in the magma. Aluminium, ferrosum, and ferricum, elements of feebly basic character, have their combinations largely determined for them by the more strongly basic elements, with which they tend to form either complex molecules or mix-crystals.

The classification of the drift deposits is one which has given rise to very divergent views. One school holds that the Glacial Period was marked by increasingly severe conditions of climate followed by a somewhat regular amelioration. Another school holds that it consisted of a series of cold periods separated by warm intervals. It is not contended that in Pleistocene times the ice disappeared completely; for it is pretty certain that on high mountain ranges, and in the Arctic and Antarctic areas, snow-fields and glaciers existed continuously. With cold conditions the ice-covered regions spread from the Polar areas and glaciers descended from the mountains, and with the return of warmer conditions the Polar glaciers and ice-fields decreased in area whilst the mountain glaciers again retreated up the valleys. The problem as to the extent to which such variations in glacial conditions occurred, and the number of times they recurred, can only be settled by a study of the Pleistocene deposits themselves. In this matter theory cannot at present help us.

At the meeting of the British Association held at Birmingham last September, Professor W. J. Sollas, F.R.S., read a paper in which the Sub-crag flints I have discovered were rejected as not being of human workmanship. Professor Sollas mainly based his arguments upon certain flints found upon the seashore at Selsey Bill, Sussex, many of which have been collected by Mr. E. Heron Allen of that place. In August of this year I paid a visit to Selsey and, owing to the kindness of Mr. Heron Allen, was enabled to carefully examine his collection of flints and the exact places on the shore from which they were derived.

It is unfortunately true that our present knowledge of the fossil flora of the South Staffordshire Coal-field is lamentable, considering its size and importance and the abundance of fossils which it is known to contain. All that has been recorded from this coal-field is contained in a single paper by Dr. Kidston, published twenty-five years ago, on the fossil plants of the Hamstead boring, with the addition more recently of a scanty list of fossils from the Langley Green boring, and some other special studies on certain particular fossils, such as Crossotheca and the fructification of Neuropteris. Prior to these records Hooker alone appears to have described plants from this coal-field.