IT is not surprising that the earlier geological writers on the district north and west of the Silurian and other hills of Lakeland, and between the River Caldew and the Solway, should have arrived at diverse conclusions as to the affinities of certain sandstones and shales of reddish or purple-grey tint, which are now known to occur at various horizons in the Carboniferous series. For this district presents unusual difficulties to an understanding of the disposition of the rocks beneath the Glacial Drift.

In the year 1856 Mr. J. W. Salter and Mr. W. Ferguson described before the Geological Society (Q.J.G.S., vol. xiii, p. 83, 1857) a series of fossils which had been collected from Drift material at Moreseat and other localities near Aberdeen, and seemed to indicate the occurrence of Cretaceous rocks in sitû at no great distance from this locality.

I Have recently been examining a series of specimens of Silurian slates from Scotland, specially collected because of the very intense shearing they have undergone. These and the accompanying other rocks are all crushed and torn out in a most remarkable degree, and the microscope shows how severely their constituents have been acted upon mechanically. Yet the crystalline and mineralogical development is seen to be but very moderate indeed. The micaceous mineral is all in one plane, and transverse sections, in polarized light, show that it is a felted, wavy, and puckered mass of interwoven flakelets, with chloritic substance intimately diffused among it, and still more apparent in separate little streaks and lenticles. The small amount of quartz present is rolled out into long, thin lenticles also. But the micaceous mineral itself is not at all far advanced, either as to size of its flakes or the nature of the mineral. It is still an impure, rather deeply-coloured greenish-yellow substance; not any of it has arrived at the stage of muscovite, and dehydration shows, in a remarkable manner, how very considerable its impurity still is. In its original condition, the slate gives sections which present a very uniform appearance under the microscope. The colour is the same all over, and the only indication of the presence of bands of varying nature is found in a very slight increase, in some layers, of the coarseness of grain and of the number of quartz-lenticles, and in the diffusion of the chloritic substance. But after heating the specimen, the effects seen in the sections are most striking. There are now many bands of different colours, yellow, red, greenish-brown, and brown, presenting very strong contrasts, and showing that noticeable differences in chemical composition must have existed in different thin layers of the seemingly homogeneous slate. Not only the interwoven chlorite, but also the micaceous mineral, has taken on these tints in very decided degrees. It must have been unusually impure. It has lost, after heating, nearly all its action in polarized light.

It is just a score of years since the unstalked crinoid Uintacrinus was discovered, almost simultaneously, in the Niobrara Chalk of Kansas and the Lower Senonian of Westphalia. The American specimens were described by Grinnell and Meek, while the single European specimen was exhaustively discussed by Schlueter. Of recent years further specimens, in a better state of preservation, have been found in Kansas, and a slab purchased by the British Museum enabled me to make a more detailed study, the results of which were published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society (vol. 1893, pp. 974–1004, pls. liv–lvi, April, 1896). But as to the occurrence of Uintacrinus in Europe, our knowledge at the beginning of 1896 remained as in 1876; not even from Reckling-hausen, the original Westphalian locality, had another fragment been obtained. It may therefore be a surprise to many to learn that Uintacrinus is one of the commonest fossils of the Marsupites zone, not only in the Marlstone of Westphalia, but in the Chalk of our own island, and probably at the same horizon in a good many other countries.

In looking at the map of the Great Lake region, you have all noticed the backward bending thumb of Michigan projecting into the icy waters of Lake Superior; yet but few of you, perhaps, have realized that extending along that thumb there runs a band or ring of native copper. It does not, like most gold or silver bands, extend around the finger, but along it—from the base of the hand to the end of the thumb—this central band lies embedded in the flesh binding all together. Shall we now dissect it, laying bare its flesh, muscle, and bone, and try to explain its marvellous organization ?

The object of this communication is to place upon record the existence of Nummulitic rocks in South-Eastern Africa; the result of an examination of specimens brought me by their discoverer, Mr. David Draper, F.G.S., of Johannesburg, the enterprising Secretary of the Geological Society of South Africa.

In the third edition of his Text-Book of Geology, Sir Archibald Geikie has discussed the question whether fossils can be wholly depended upon to indicate the age of rocks when similar or representative species are found in areas wide apart. Thus he tells us (p. 665) that in Bohemia and Russia some of the most characteristic Upper Silurian organisms are found beneath strata replete with Lower Silurian life. Again, speaking of the close of the Silurian period, he says (p. 760): “There is every reason to believe that for a long time the marine sedimentation of Upper Silurian type continued to prevail in some areas, while the probably lacustrine type of the Old Red Sandstone had already been established in others.” He also tells us (p. 828) that “In the West of Scotland there occur among the red sandstones (some of which contain Old Red Sandstone fishes) bands of limestone full of true Carboniferous Limestone corals and brachiopods.” Again (p. 665), he draws our attention to the statement that “In Australia a flora with Jurassic affinities and a Carboniferous Limestone fauna were contemporaneous” while we may conclude our extracts by one which says: “At the present day the higher fauna of Australia is more nearly akin to that which flourished in Europe far back in Mesozoic time, than to the living fauna of any other region of the globe.”

The genus Cheirurus offers an interesting study in evolution. Barrande, in his monumental work on the Silurian System of Bohemia, drew up a classification of the genus based principally on the character of the pleural grooves. Thus he divided the species into two sections—

In pursuance of my studies of clays, shales, and slates, I have recently been examining some specimens to which a good deal of interest attaches. Some of them are Carboniferous shales from deep collieries in South Wales. Another, also a Carboniferous shale, is from a deep boring in the Isle of Man.

The question of the zonal division of the Carboniferous system has been raised during the last twelve months, and certain fossils have already been mentioned as typical of a certain succession in a certain district or traverse of rocks. Having studied the Carboniferous system in most of the districts of Great Britain and Ireland where the beds are exposed, and chiefly from a palæontological point of view, I beg to offer for discussion a few of the facts of biological distribution which have come to my knowledge.

However paradoxical it may appear, we have reason to believe that the occurrence of so-called ganoidian fishes—of a freshwater type—in the Old Red Sandstone affords the strongest evidence in favour of its marine origin. That recent representatives of the ganoids of the Old Red Sandstone inhabit rivers and lakes of the globe, is by no means a proof of the fresh-water origin of the latter fishes. The immense interval of time implied by the comparison renders its value somewhat problematical. Sir A. Geikie, in referring to the fishes of the Old Red Sandstone, says: “That some of the fishes found their way to the sea, as our modern salmon does, is indicated by the occasional occurrence of their remains among those of the truly marine fauna of the Devonian rocks.”

The most important addition to the fossil flora of the Bajo de Velis (which locality I visited from Dec., 1894, to March, 1895) is the discovery of Rhipidopsis gingkoides, Schmalh., and R. densinervis, Fstm., each represented by well-preserved leaves and numerous fruits. Both species are met with in the Damudas of India—R. densinervis in the Rániganj (Kámthi group), R. gingkoides in the Barákar (Duranga Coalfield), the latter together with Cyclopitys dichotoma, Fstm. (this curious type was detected by my friend and colleague, Dr. Bodenbender, in the Sierra de Los Llanos, in the south of the province of La Rioja).

A Slight earthquake of intensity IV, according to the Rossi-Forel scale, was felt in and near Exmoor at about 9 a.m. on January 23, 1894. Its interest lies, not so much in the seismic phenomena presented by it, as in its connection with the northern boundary fault of the Morte Slates.

In 1836, Prof. J. Phillips described and figured from the Carboniferous Limestone, Goniatites evolutus, and for this species D'Orbigny, in 1850, instituted the genus Subclymenia.

The geology of the neighbourhood of Liverpool is not on a superficial view very attractive. Nevertheless, to those interested in physical geology it presents some phenomena worthy of careful study.

Some critics of my theory of the “Origin of Mountain Ranges” appear to have strangely lost sight of one of the essential principles upon which it rests. This seems to have arisen through their attention having been too much engrossed with what I have said on the subject of cubical or voluminal expansion.

A Long the branch which is marked earlier by Cyrtometopus and Cheirurus (sens. str.), the last stage of development corresponds with Salter's subgenus Crotalocephalus. This is almost entirely restricted to Devonian beds, but it is linked to Cheirurus (sens. str.) in time and zoological characters by Ch. Sternbergi (Boeck) and Ch. Quenstedti (Barr.), in which the glabellar side-furrows hardly meet in the middle of the glabella. The important subgeneric characters of Crotalocephalus are the continuous first and second side-furrows, the triangular basal lobes which nearly or quite meet in the centre of the glabella at their apices, and the nearly straight obliquely-directed third side-furrows of the glabella. The earlier forms of the subgenus have their triangular basal lobes still separated by a median portion of the glabella, as in Ch. Quenstedti, from Étage E. This species has a rather curiously specialized kind of pygidium, with only two pairs of long spinose pleuræ the third pair is very short and rudimentary, and of the fourth pair there is no trace. It is a noteworthy point that the pygidia of this subgenus are, as a rule, almost identical with those in the group of Cheirurus (sens. str.), with three equal pleuræ with free ends (vide antea), and do not show the enlargement of the first pair, as in the Russian Cheirurus (sens. str.).

The sixteenth of May last was a disastrous date for Southwold and the neighbourhood, for, owing to the prevalence of northerly winds on this and the two previous days, culminating in a moderate gale, the tides rose to an abnormal height, and this, combined with a rough sea, made fearful inroads upon the soft, sandy cliff and the shingle on the foreshore, washing away a large piece of land and creating a new cove at the northern boundary of the little town. The effect would have been worse but for the existence of a clay-footing and promontory at the extreme point, and two immense concrete blocks constructed a few years ago to act as a break water and give protection to this part of the cliff. These latter proved of temporary service, but became so shattered and disintegrated that they must be replaced, or a sea-wall built, to resist further inroads at the next high-flowing tide. Similar erosion has occurred on the face of Easton Bavents cliff and at Covehithe, and it is feared that the loss of land at those places will render Southwold all the more assailable in future. Upon two occasions during the winter of 1894–5 (December and January) the tide rose to even greater height, and inundated large tracts of salt-marsh around Southwold, making two ruptures in the railway embankment and stopping the trains for a few days, but as there happened fortunately to be no wind at the time the damage done to the sea-front was confined to the sweeping of the shingle further south, with comparatively little damage to the cliffs of Southwold. It became necessary, however, to remove all the boats and capstans from the beach and pull them up the cliff or drag them inland; and this had again to be done on the 15th and 16th May.

The question of the affinities of the Wealden Vertebrate Fauna having been re-opened by Professor Marsh in his paper on the Dinosauria, read before the last meeting of the British Association at Ipswich, it may be of interest to place on record a complete list of the species of fishes now known from the English Wealden deposits. This is more extensive than any previous list, being based on the unique collection in the British Museum, which has only lately been examined in detail. Unfortunately, however, none of the specimens, except a few examples of Lepidotus, are labelled to indicate the precise horizon from which they were obtained; and scarcely any of the names of localities are very definite.