The usually quiet city of Prague in Bohemia, with its population of 235,000 inhabitants, considerably more than half of whom are Czechs, has been deeply moved by the recent death of an old French exile, who for more than half a century had made his home there, and, having taken up the geology of the country around Prague for his study, had endeared himself to the people by learning their language and interesting them in his pursuits. After publishing at great cost his geological works, and amassing a vast collection of fossils, he has at his death bequeathed his Library and Collections (valued at £20,000) to the Prague Museum, together with funds for the completion of his scientific labours. “To-day,” writes Dr. Fritsch, “I have opened a ‘Barrande Fund’ with 1,000 florins, which I hope will soon reach to fl. 20,000; its object being to promote the study of the Silurian formations of Bohemia. We also wish to place a large slab inscribed with the name of ‘Barrande’ on the Silurian rocks in Kuchelbad, near the celebrated locality Wiskočilka, where he picked up his first fossil Orthoceras Bohemicum.”

IV.—Brachymetopus, M‘Coy, 1847.—General form elliptical; head-shield semicircular, and slightly pointed, about one-third wider than long; glabella small, somewhat elevated, one-third the width of the entire shield, and about one-half the length, having a basal lobe on each side, but no short lateral furrows on the glabella; neck-furrow distinctly marked, equal in width to the posterior border of free cheeks; eyes small, smooth, equal to half the length of the glabella; no facial suture visible, only the axal furrow surrounding the glabella and the neck-furrow; free-cheeks slightly convex, nearly twice as long as they are broad, with no visible suture separating them from one another in front of the glabella; margin broad and slightly grooved, angles of cheeks produced posteriorly into spines. The entire surface of the head covered irregularly with a small bead-like ornamentation.

Hitherto I have been in the habit of referring the Gyracanthus spines commonly occurring in the Borough Lee Ironstone to G. formosus or tuberculatus of Agassiz, being disposed to believe in the specific identity of those two forms, as has already been suggested by Messrs. Hancock and Atthey, and hinted at by Agassiz himself. In fact, the salient point of difference between the two is the greater extent of the tuberculation of the ridges in the latter, while in the former it is principally seen on the proximal parts of the ridges, which, as they converge towards the anterior middle line of the spine, become first simply undulated and then smooth. The original figured specimen of G. tuberculatus is from the Coal-measures of Sunderland; that of G. formosus is from the same formation at Dudley; but though Agassiz refers to it as occurring also at Burdiehouse, in Midlothian, and Burntisland in Fifeshire, it seems to me very doubtful if these Calciferous Sandstone specimens are really the same. And certainly the study of a large quantity of additional material from Borough Lee has convinced me that the species of Gyracanthus characteristic of this Ironstone of Carboniferous Limestone age is specifically different from both formosus and tuberculatus.

Within the last few months a good deal has been written upon the question of upheavals and depressions in the crust of the earth both in the Geological Magazine and in “Nature.” By far the majority of these writers have maintained with some show of reason that depressions are the result of the deposition of material of some sort on a part of the earth where it was not previously, in consequence of which the newly loaded part sinks down, just as a weight placed upon an air cushion causes the part on which the weight rests to be depressed. This novel view has been supported by pointing to the fact that numerous instances are met with in which vast thicknesses of rocks have been superimposed one upon another, while throughout their whole depth traces of shallow or comparatively shallow water are found, it being inferred that the sedimentary deposit being the cause of the depression, the bottom sinks exactly in proportion to the amount of the deposit. The Carboniferous system has been advanced as a conspicuous instance of this state of matters; the same holds true of the lower Old Red Sandstone, which appears to have been deposited in lakes.

The author of a paper on the above subject read before the Anthropological Section of the British Association at Southport having made the startling assertion that, “In immediate proximity (to where the skull was found) were numerous bones of the Irish Elk and Reindeer,” I feel it incumbent on me to relate the facts of the case. Unfortunately I was not at the meeting when the paper was read, so could not contradict the statement on the spot.