The valuable paper by Professor Harkness on “The Middle Pleistocene Deposits of Britain,” published in the pages of this periodical, was a completely successful attempt to synchronize the members of the Drift series of Ireland with those of England and Scotland. He shows that there exist in the East of Ireland detached portions of an Upper Boulder-clay resting on the shelly sands and gravels of the “ Middle Drift,” and that in other localities these sands and gravels may be observed resting on the Lower Boulder-clay, which is generally supported by rock with a glaciated surface. The order of succession of the members of the Drift series is, therefore, precisely similar to that of the North-western counties of England, where we have at the base (a) Lower Till or Boulder-clay; (b) Marine Sands and Gravels; (c) Upper Till or Boulder-clay; —an order of succession which I have for some years felt satisfied would be found ultimately to hold good over the whole of England.

In that rich storehouse of fossils, the Cornbrash, there occur, as all geologists who have been in the habit of collecting from it are aware, several species of the genus Ostrea, two of which are large and conspicuous shells. One of these is the everywhere abundant and very characteristic plicated form known, as O. Marshii, Sow. (O. flabelliformis, Lamk.?); the other, which is far less common, but by no means rare, is flat and smooth, and sometimes considerably elongated in form. This latter species does not appear to have received a name in this country, but it may not improbably be identical with the O. exarata of Goldfuss (Petrifacta Germaniæ, Theil ii. z. 5, tab. 72, fig. 9), a shell first obtained from the Unteroolith of Gräfinberg.

During the past few years Mr. Charles Moore and Mr. J. McMurtrie have called attention to a remarkable inversion of strata, which was indicated by the working of coal under the Mountain Limestone near Vobster, on the north of the Mendip Hills. And this fact renders necessary an important modification in the geological sections of the district.

I had the honour in 1866 to describe the first specimen of a fossil Myriapod from the Coal-measures met with in this country. It was discovered by the late Mr. Thomas Brown, of Glasgow, an indefatigable geologist and an ardent collector of fossils, who obtained it in a nodule of Clay-ironstone from Kilmaurs.

Whenever a bone is about to be produced in the animal body, its form is first sketched out in connective tissue or cartilage, and then ossification commences at one or several points; if there is but one centre of ossification, or if several centres unite, but one bone is formed; if the several centres do not completely unite, as many separate bones are produced.

The following is a continuation of the results of observations in the Lake District and neighbourhood, made during the greater part of last year, and the beginning of the present year.

Although the Coalbrook-dale Coal-field has received a large share of the attention of geologists, the progress of mining operations reveals new facts from time to time, enabling us to explain away some of the difficulties which have beset earlier writers.

It has frequently been found that in cases of depression or elevation of land the records of historians have corroborated the inferences of geologists. The works of the ancient geographers have also been of use in this way. It is, however, more rarely that a tradition receives confirmation at the hands of geological observers, and this it is which leads me to call the attention of the readers of the Geological Magazine to the subiect of the present paper.

The upper portion of the sections in these pits usually exhibits from a foot to a foot and a half of soil, which I call, after Mr. Trimmer, “Warp.” In this district it is unusually full of land-shells of recent species. Nevertheless, the assemblage is not exactly what one meets with living on the spot. The most common Helix of the warp is H. arbustorum. This species occurs alive in the neighbourhood, but it can scarcely be called common. Helix nemoralis is common in the warp and also alive. Helix aspersa is by no means common in the warp, but it is common alive. Cyclostoma elegans is very common in the warp, but I have not seen it alive in this neighbourhood. It is exceedingly likely that drainage and cultivation may have been sufficient to have wrought these changes. At the base of the warp I have found an oyster-shell, which looks as if it had been broken at the edge to get it open.

Although unwilling to admit that in the history of our Earth special and peculiar conditions have prevailed at any period since the first advent of organic beings, yet we cannot doubt, that during particular eras, circumstances favoured the development of special groups of organisms which, in consequence, flourished in greater perfection and numbers than the rest.

In the last number of the Geological Magazine there is an abstract from an interesting and important paper by Prof. Hull and Mr. Traill on the relative ages of certain igneous rocks of Co. Down, Ireland. In that paper there is one paragraph on which I should like to offer a few remarks, as it refers to a previous communication from myself, and relates to a subject in which I take a special interest. The paragraph is as follows:—“It might have been supposed that microscopical examination would show some distinction in the basalts of these geological ages, but recent investigations by Zirkel, D. Forbes, Allport, and others, tend to show that there is no criterion of age amongst the constituents of basalt, dolerite, or melaphyre.”

In many parts of the world large accumulations of blowing sand exist, either on the sea-board or inland. When inland it usually is composed for the most part of silicious particles; but when in the neighbourhood of the sea, it is more or less mixed with shells, corals, etc.; moreover, it may merge into shell-sand, a highly calcareous Drift, formed of the débris of shells, coral, madrepore, and other marine organic remains.

It is a singular coincidence that in a former communication to this Magazine (Vol. VI., p. 1) I described, among other Coniferous fruits, two from the Gault at Folkestone, the one the cone of a pine, and the other of a Wellingtonia, and that in this communication I propose to describe two hitherto unknown fruits from the same deposit and found at the same locality, belonging also the one to a Wellingtonia and the other to a pine. Although the small pinecone already described (Pinites gracilis) differs in form and in the arrangement of the scales from any known cone, recent or fossil, it is more nearly related to that group of the section Pinea, the members of which are now associated with the Wellingtonias in the west of North America, than with any other member of the great genus Pinus. I, however, hesitated to refer to this interesting fact, because the occurrence of the two cones in the Gault might have been due to their being accidentally brought into the same silt by rivers having widely separated drainage areas. And it is easier to keep back generalizations based on imperfect data, than to suppress them after publication, when in the progress of investigation they are shown to be false. But I have now to describe a second pinecone more closely related to the Californian species of Pinea, and with it a new species of Wellingtonia. These surely point with tolerable certainty to the existence of a Coniferous vegetation on the high lands of the Upper Cretaceous period having a fades similar to that now existing in the mountains on the west of North America, between the thirtieth and fortieth parallels of latitude. No fossil referable to Sequoia has hitherto been found in strata older than the Gault, and here on the first appearance of the genus we find it associated with pines of the same group that now flourish by its side in the New World.

During last summer I visited the interesting and ancient town of Ludlow, where, under the guidance of Mr. Robert Lightbody, F.G.S., I had the opportunity of seeing the admirable Public Museum, belonging to the Ludlow Natural History Society, and also the rich private collection of Mr. Lightbody and that of Mr. Humphrey Salwey. In the Society's Museum, my attention was directed by Mr. Lightbody to a truly remarkable fossil from the collection of Mr. Henry Pardoe, and obtained by him from the Lower Ludlow, Church Hill, Leintwardine. It consists of seven body-segments and three caudal spines, of the largest example of Ceratiocaris I have ever seen; exceeding in size the C. Bohernicus of Barrande, or C. Murchisoni from the Upper Ludlow Rock, Ludlow and Wenlock Shale, Dudley, figured and described by me in the Geological Magazine, 1866, Vol. III., PI. X., Fig. 8, pp. 203–205. The figure (taken from a sketch made at the time) given on Plate III., Fig. 3, being only one-third the size of the fossil, conveys but a very inadequate idea of this interesting Crustacean remain. The seven body segments together measure eight and a half inches in length, and nearly two inches in breadth; they are nearly quadrangular, and are covered with fine and delicate parallel slightly waved striæ. The first segment is three-quarters of an inch long; the second, half an inch; the third, three-quarters of an inch; the fourth, fifth, and sixth, one inch each in length; and the seventh, two and three-quarter inches long.

Those who have taken part in the recent discussions as to the origin of lake-basins are well aware that one of the chief causes which has retarded a settlement of the controversy is the ignorance prevailing as to the true form of such basins. Even as to the Swiss and Lombard lakes, constantly visited as they have been by men of science, the data are extremely scanty and no way reliable. A few soundings made by myself in the Lake of Como, in 1863, and referred to in a paper published in the Philosophical Magazine in the following December, increased my conviction of the importance of instituting careful and exact measurements of the form and dimensions of the beds of lakes, if we were to reason securely as to their origin. I expressed that conviction at the time to an active local naturalist, Don Baldassare Bernasconi, residing at Laglio. In 1865 Signer Gentilli, one of the engineers of the Lombardo-Venetian Railway, being for some months on the Lake, proposed to undertake a regular survey of the bed of the Lake by means of a complete series of soundings, and devised an instrument for measuring the distances traversed horizontally in a boat, corresponding to each cast of the sounding line. Signer Gentilli found two active coadjutors in the persons of the above-named ecclesiastic, and of Dr. Guiseppe Casella, also resident at Laglio, on the Lake.

The fossils of the volcanic Islands of the Atlantic Ocean, St. Helena, Madeira, Teneriffe, and Iceland, have a specialinterest, as giving dates relative to the supposed Atlantic Continent. The fossil land-shells of St. Helena and Madeira appear to belong to a period corresponding to the Crag-formation of England. The marine fossils of the Canaries, on the contrary, belong to a somewhat more ancient period.

The question as to the probable existence of a Coal-field on the south side of the Mendips having lately been prominently brought before the public in the Report of the Royal Coal Coal mission (vol. i.), it may not be uninteresting to offer a few remarks on the present aspect of the question.

Certain opinions have been put forth during the last few years which do not seem to be quite in accordance with some facts which have come to our knowledge in working out systematically, various pits and sections in the Red Crag district, and we propose discussing in the following paper a few of the more salient points bearing upon the fauna, and the position in time and place of this particular series of deposits.

Considerable difficulty has been felt in accounting for the transport of the Wastdale Granite Boulders across the Pennine chain to the east. Professors Harkness and Phillips, Messrs. Searles Wood, jun., Mackintosh, and I presume all who have written on the subject, agree that these blocks could not have been transported by land-ice. The agency of floating ice under some form or other is assumed by them all.

It has always been difficult to account for the feet that, while Moraine Drifts occur at such low levels in the Lake District, Marine Drifts are found at such high elevations in the surrounding district. Mr. Mackintosh's new facts throw some light on this phenomena, but do not entirely explain it, owing to his having given, in my opinion, far too little importance to the second Glaciation experienced by the Lake District after its emergence from the Glacial Sea.