That the energy of the earth and the sun is a continually diminishing quantity, and must at the beginning of geologic history have been far in excess of its present amount, are propositions that few at the present day would be found to deny; but the exact influence of this greater quantity of energy on geologic changes has not, I believe, been hitherto fully discussed.

At the British Association Meeting in Dundee, in 1867, the late Dr. Chambers, in a brief paper, called the attention of Section C. to the existence of an “eskar” in the neighbouring parish of Forgan, in the County of Fife. As far as I can recollect or ascertain, the paper said little or nothing about the subject further than describing its situation, and recommending it to the attention of the Section. And I am not aware that the great accumulations of gravel and sand to which Dr. Chambers referred have been made the subject of systematic observation since.

Of this remarkable genus several species from the Lower Silurian rocks of Russia have been well described and illustrated by Eichwald, Pander, de Verneuil, Kutorga, and others, to whose works and papers the reader is referred.

There is a homely saying, “Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” Mr. Goodchild, with that ingenuity for which he is remarkable, has written an elaborate paper to prove that the terraces of the Yorkshire Limestone dales are all the work of the Great Ice Sheet. This paper will doubtless call forth a number of equally elaborate answers: and this is well. But if Mr. Goodchild has a fine goose fattened on the Limestone terraces of Wensleydale, I have an equally fine gander reared on Gritstone terraces in Derbyshire: and if a frozen sauce of regelated snow from wintry storms of the Great Ice Age is good for one, it is equally good for the other. Dropping metaphor, there is no difference between terraces, mainly of limestone, in Wensleydale, and other terraces, chiefly of grit, that are found over all the Millstone Grit area of South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, saving that while limestone predominates in the one, beds of grit do in the other.

At the London Meeting of the North of England Institute of Mining Engineers last June, I read a paper in which I ventured to put forward a scheme of classification of the Carboniferous rocks of Northumberland which I believed to be both a natural and a convenient one.