It is a fact universally accepted that, within a period comparatively recent, extensive districts in North America and in Europe, now fruitful and luxuriant, were covered with a thick mantle of snow and ice; and their valleys were filled with glaciers, which extended into the sea, and, breaking off at their extremities, floated away as icebergs.

So many geologists appear to take it for granted that the cold of the Glacial Epoch extended over the whole earth that a few words of caution from the Southern Hemisphere may not perhaps be out of place.

In the September Number of the Geol. Mag. pp. 425, 426, there are some remarks by Mr. G. H. Kinahan on the nomenclature of certain igneous rocks, on which I should like to offer a few observations. The rocks referred to belong to the acidic group, and are mentioned under the various names of granite, nevadite, granitic rhyolite, liparite, trachyte, elvanite, siliceous elvanite, felstone, bottleite, trachalite; the two last being synonymous, for it appears that bottleite is the local name for a vitrioid rock pronounced to be trachalite; but several of the other names are also synonymous or useless, for we are told that nevadite—a proposed new addition to our granitic rocks—is characterized by a more or less crystalline felsitic matrix inclosing crystals of quartz, one or two felspars with mica or amphibole.

I am not aware that any geological notice has been taken of the effect of the wind on a flat sandy shore, further than the simple removal of the sand therefrom, and its collection on the sea-margin in the shape of sand dunes.

At the present moment a walk on the shore at Blundellsands has vividly impressed me with the efficacy of this agent—wind—as a denuder.

Though I have frequently observed the phenomenon I am about to describe, after continued gales from the North-West, I never saw it displayed in so uniform a manner as now.

I. Concretionary with Calcareous Cement.—Last autumn the Rev. John Adams, of Stockcross, kindly took me to see the interesting specimen of Sarsden Stone in situ at Langley Park, north of Newbury, Berks, which he described in the “Transact. Newbury District Field Club,” vol. i. 1871, p. 107, and in the Geol. Mag. Vol. X. p. 200; and which has also been described by Mr. W. Whitaker in the “Memoirs Geol. Survey,” vol. iv. p. 193. This concretionary Sarsden Stone, belonging to the “Woolwich and Reading” series, consists of quartz grains with a Calcareous cement. This is an unusual circumstance for “Sarsden Stone”; and points to the former presence of Shells, perhaps, or of calciferous waters, in that portion of the Lower Eocene series.

Shortly after this remarkable shower of meteorites had taken place two very full reports on the occurrence were drawn up by von Haidinger. It is computed that over a very limited area more than a thousand stones, weighing in all from 8 to 10 cwt., must have fallen. The largest found is now preserved in the Vienna Collection; it weighs 293·3 kilog. (5 cwt. 3 qrs. 3 lbs.), and measures 2ft. 4 in. long and 18 in. broad, and penetrated the ground to a depth of 11 ft. For drawings of this enormous block, the largest mass of meteoric rock preserved in any collection, and coloured representations of the meteor which was observed at the time of its descent, the reader is referred to von Haidinger's two memoirs.