During a short holiday spent last summer in the Eifel, I was much struck with the occurrence of an extremely vesicular, dark-green glass in the lava at Bertrich, the most southerly point of the district at which traces of volcanic action are to be met with. It lies in the valley of the Uessbach, a little stream that flows into the Alf, a tributary of the Moselle. In all probability the ground on which Bertrich now stands was at one time covered with lava, and if the course of the Uessbach be followed for about a mile and a half above the town, thick patches of it may be clearly seen on either side of the present bed of the stream, all traces of it ceasing higher up the valley. It is well exposed in a quarry known as the Mühlrech, on the left bank of the Uessbach immediately below the high road to Kenfus, and about a mile above Bertrich. Here the lava exhibits a fine section about 90 feet high, but it is being rapidly cleared away for road metal. The quarry lies immediately at the mouth of a side-valley called the Müllischwiese, which commences near the foot of the Falkenlei, one of the three craters that overshadow Bertrich, and gently slopes down for a distance of about three-quarters of a mile into the valley of the Uessbach. The lava which can be thus so easily traced down to Bertrich is part of a great stream which in all probability commenced at some point in the Müllischwiese, and followed the course of the Uessbach, filling its channel to a considerable height. On its way it forms the well-known “Cheese Grotto,” about half-a-mile above Bertrich. It is difficult to determine the exact spot in the Müllischwiese at which the flow commenced, for the valley is now all under cultivation and much overgrown in places, and no traces of the flow can be seen except at the quarry to which I have referred, which is at the junction of the two valleys. Excavations have now been commenced immediately above the quarry by the side of the high-road; and the lava which is there being exposed is exactly similar to that seen below in the large quarry, only it is not so hard and compact, and presents a somewhat slaggy appearance.

IN a previous paper I have discussed the post-Tertiary Clays of Eastern England. In that paper I endeavoured to show that these clays, varying as they do in texture, composition, and contents, mark a varying geographical distribution and substratum rather than a succession of changes in time; that, so far as we can tell, they are for the most part on the same horizon, and interlock with each other, with occasional local overlaps; while they are united by one common element, namely, the presence of certain foreign boulders of the same general type in them all.

In the present review of the Dinosaurs, I have confined myself mainly to the type specimens which I have described, but have included with them other important remains where these were available for investigation. The extensive collections in the museum of Yale University contain so many of the important type specimens now known from America, that they alone furnish an admirable basis for classification, and it was upon these mainly that I first established the present system, which has since been found to hold equally good for the Dinosaurs discovered elsewhere. In the further study of these reptiles, it was also necessary to examine both the European forms and those from other parts of the world, and I have now studied nearly every known specimen of importance. These investigations have enabled me to make this classification more complete, and to bring it down to the present time.

As is well known, there are in Switzerland a good many cold mineral, but very few powerful thermal springs, a fact which is in a great measure due to the scarcity of the younger series of eruptive rocks, such as give rise to the abundant hot springs of Bohemia, the Taunus and Eiffel districts, Auvergne, the Pyrenees, and other localities possessing similar geological features.

I Have received from my friend Mr. W. F. Smeeth a paper entiled “A Perlitic Pitchstone from the Tweed River, New South Wales, with remarks on the so-called Perlitic Structure in Quartz,” published by the Royal Society of New South Wales. While thanking him for his courtesy in making me acquainted with his views, I desire at the same time to express my sense of the kindly way in which he has criticized, though often adversely, certain statements already published by me. It may be of interest to give to the readers of the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE an abstract of the excellent piece of work which Mr. Smeeth has done, as well as to draw attention to the points in which he has compelled me to agree with him and to remark on those on which there is still some difference of opinion between us.

The specimen which forms the subject of the present notice belongs to the genus which is termed by some authors Trachyteuthis, and by others Coccoteuthis. Both names were originally given to the internal shell of a Sepia-like Cephalopod; the former to examples from the Lithographic Stone (Lower Kimeridgian) of Bavaria, and the latter to a specimen from the Kimeridge Clay of Dorset. They are regarded as synonymous, but some authors use one and some the other.

I have just read the abstract of Mr. Clement Reid's paper to the Geological Society (April 29, 1896) upon the Eocene deposits of Dorset. Many years ago I paid a good deal of attention to these beds, and have many notes upon what I saw. The section which I now send is reduced from my notebook, a section which in my belief has never been seen by any geologist except myself. It was taken when a large pit was open, and the section clear and unmistakable. I copy the words I wrote on the spot. “December 24, 1855. Examined the large gravel-pit recently opened in the Tertiary Eocene beds at Bincombe. A section is given on the last leaf [of the notebook]. The deep cuttings lately made show the beds to be vertical, following the dip of the chalk. The beds have much the character of those at Bournemouth, except that they are much coarser. The place of the large flints with fossils is shown in the section. The manner in which the ends of the vertical beds are bent over, and dragged down the slope of the hill, is particularly well shown.”

In August, 1891, I published in the Geological Magazine the results of my work on the Pleistocene beds of Gozo. Since then I have made a careful and systematic survey of the islands, and have discovered and traced out several important beds that had escaped the notice of those who had preceded me in working out the islands' geology. In the following “notes” I have briefly summarized the results in the hope that they may be of use, not only to other students of the geology of the district, but also to the agriculturist, who, by drawing on the resources that they offer, may bring into cultivation much of that portion of the western parts of the islands which from its supposed dearth of soil has hitherto been looked upon as uncultivable. I have elsewhere described this district and its capabilities; there is, therefore, no need for me to enlarge upon that part of the subject here.

A Short time ago I read a paper before the Geological Society, of which an abstract appeared in the Proceedings, in which I discussed some questions of critical interest in the geology of East Anglia.

The physical conditions under which the Old Red Sandstone of Scotland was formed is a subject that has long occupied the attention of many of our leading geologists, from the time of Hugh Miller and Sir Roderick Murchison down to those of the present day. It has been variously regarded as of fresh-water and marine origin, as having been thrown down in lakes and in the open sea, or in inlets of the latter. But as yet the whole matter seems to remain an open question, which the unique physical and palæontological elements of the formation make difficult of solution.

All the fragments appear to be referable to the same species. There is not a complete specimen among them; some show the alveolar region, but the majority exhibit only the post-alveolar part, and there is not an example with the apex preserved.

Since I joined this Society I have devoted special attention to Glacial Geology, commencing with an investigation of the Pleistocene deposits in the neighbourhood of Liverpool, and gradually extending my observations to adjacent areas, and finally generally to England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. I have therefore thought that the “Present Aspects of Glacial Geology” would form a fitting subject for my closing Presidential Address.

The proof which I gave in June, 1891, of the production of “rich phosphate” by enrichment of phosphatic chalk through the influence of the Tertiary deposit called “bief,” enabled us to foresee the existence of similar rich phosphate in the London Basin; since phosphatic chalk, analogous to that which I had described or discovered in Picardy, especially at Hardivilliers and Hallencourt, had been discovered by Mr. Strahan and described by him in an interesting paper “On a Phosphatic Chalk with Belemnitella quadrata.”

IN 1893 I described in this Magazine a group of quartz-schists which may be traced for many miles along the Alps—a group belonging to the series which appear to be the newest among the crystalline schists of that chain. I may refer to this paper for a description of their mode of occurrence, distribution, and structure, both macroscopic and microscopic, merely stating that, while considering them to have had a clastic origin—in other words, to be metamorphosed sandstones—I pointed out that they presented some material differences from ordinary quartzites, and that “original fragments [could not] be distinguished with certainty in any of them,” though “here and there a clastic structure,” of which I gave instances, “may be suspected.”

During the re-survey of sheet 155 of the Geological Survey map by Mr. C. Fox Strangways, the writer was instructed to study the ancient rocks where they crop up inside the boundaries of the Trias. The ancient rocks of Charnwood Forest appear in isolated spots, sometimes of considerable size, through the Trias of the Midland Plain. The oldest rock in contact with them is the Carboniferous Limestone of Grace Dieu, which is dolomitized. Evidence as to their exact age cannot, therefore, be obtained from superposition.

I HAVE read with much interest Mr. Horace Brown's account in the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE for February, 1896, of the boring for water in the Trias at Stratford-on-Avon. In it he makes brief allusion to the sandstones in the Upper Keuper, and refers to Mr. Howell's statement of the occurrence of certain sandstones near Henley-in-Arden. He does not seem to be aware that similar sandstones are more or less widely spread over a considerable area in some parts of the Midlands, north and north-east of Henley and north-west of Warwick at a higher level, the highest point being 445 feet above the level of the sea. Many years ago I noticed some sandstone in Miss Phillips' park at Edstone not given in the Survey Map, and I informed my friend the late Professor Ramsay of the fact. These sandstones may also be seen in many places, especially in the parish of Rowington. They are exposed on the banks of the canal and along the road leading to Warwick, and were formerly obtained from quarries in the parish now long ago filled up, according to certain old documents in our parish chest, which gives an account of payments made for stone from this place, and our fine church and others in the neighbourhood and some old houses are built of it. When the Great Western Railway was made here a deep cutting through the sandstones was exposed along the line at Finwood in this parish; and lately they were detected when the new line to Henley was constructed. All the higher ridges in this district—they can hardly be called hills—are composed of the sandstones, the lower ground, where the marls and sandstones have been denuded, being formed of the red marls below. Sections are generally rare, as the stone is seldom employed except at Shrewley quarry near here, where the best section of the Upper Keuper beds are exposed. There are about two beds of useful stone: the upper one is inferior to the lower or bottom rock, which is a hard sandstone of some thickness and makes a good building stone, and is used by the Canal Company. This quarry is famous for many interesting fossils so scarce in the Trias, and is noted for the remains of fish, viz., Semionotus, Acrodus (spines and teeth), footprints of Labyrinthodon, and, the rarest of all, moulds of several species of mollusks, the only British locality where any shells have been found. I may add that the wells in the parish are fairly supplied with water from the sandstones, but it is hard and more or less charged with sulphates.

I Am tempted to offer a few notes with the conclusions I arrived at during some weeks residence this summer in the Isle of Wight, having been struck with the remarkably definite data which the island affords regarding the maximum depth of the submergence (or height of emergence) during the post-Pliocene period. The “plateau-gravels,” which are the main factors in the determination of the amount of submergence, have now been mapped by the Geological Survey, together with the other post-Tertiary deposits; but as regards their mode of formation the Survey (I believe) in its collective capacity refrains from expressing an opinion. I, for my part, have no hesitation in bespeaking for them a marine origin—(1) because of their wide distribution; (2) because of their elevated position, as shown by Mr. Codrington, Prof. Prestwich, and other writers, which is far beyond the reach of the rivers past or present; (3) because of their stratified structure and their composition. There remain the two other hypotheses, both equally out of the question—that they are lake deposits, or that they are of glacial origin. The absence of shells in the higher levels, reaching to 300–500 feet, is easily explained, and is no argument against marine conditions of deposition, as the percolation of subærial waters through such open and porous beds must necessarily have dissolved away the material of which marine organisms are mainly formed. As regards the geological age of the plateau-gravels of the Isle of Wight and Dorset, there can be little doubt that they are post-Tertiary, as they are found resting indiscriminately on all Tertiary strata of those parts. Prof. Prestwich classes them under the head of “Southern Drift,” and distinguishes them from his “Westleton Beds” on the ground mainly of difference in the composition of their constituent pebbles, and their separation from the Westleton Beds of the East of England and the Thames Basin by a barrier along the Wealden ridge. But even admitting this separation, the beds may be representative as regards age; and as for the absence or presence of certain pebbles (such as white quartz, etc), it can scarcely be expected that in any beds of conglomerate of wide extension there should be no variation in the composition of the constituent pebbles. Perhaps, on reconsideration, Prof. Prestwich might be inclined to admit that the plateau-gravel of the south and the Westleton gravel of the centre and east may be contemporaneous. With these preliminary observations, I proceed to the evidence of submergence and emergence afforded by these beds in the Isle of Wight.

I Have not been able to trace the exact relationships of this zone, with its bands of limestone, to those already given, as underlying it. Certain grits and quartzites occurring on the top of the Ben Lawers ridge may possibly belong to it, and it is certain that many of the quartzites and grits of Glenlyon, Blair Athole, and Ben Y Ghloe belong to a horizon higher than the upper argillaceous series just described. Leaving the matter thus in the meantime, until further research shall explain their true relationship, it is certain that an arenaceous band of grits and quartzites succeeds the sericite and graphite schists of the upper argillaceous zone, thus completing the whole cycle of deposits, though no evidence has yet been forthcoming to show what or where the top of this series may be.

The prevailing type of schist in the south-east of Anglesey, for some miles to the north and north-west of Beaumaris, is a wavily foliated, pale-green, chloritic rock, the quartz in which, though more abundant than appears at first glance, is in a very fine state of subdivision. In a common variety, especially prevalent about Llanddona, quartz forms nearly the whole of the rock, but it is still in very compact seams, separated by partings of chlorite or mica.

I Propose in the following paper to continue and complete the story which I have partially printed in the Geol. Mag., Feb. 1896, p. 58; but first, a few words about the Yorkshire evidence, which I had overlooked.