The purpose of this paper is to place on record some interesting occurrences of crinoids in the Scottish and Irish Carboniferous Limestones. Some of the descriptions of new species are preliminary to a fuller study of the subject.

Among interesting finds at Hook Head are several specimens of a species of Blastoid with the brachioles in position. A few also have part of the column attached. The species has not yet been worked out, but it probably belongs to the genus Orophocrinus. The calices are mostly crushed and for that reason may be difficult to identify, but so far as a somewhat cursory examination has shown they belong to a species similar to O. pentangularis Miller. Blastoids in this condition do not seem to have been recorded from European rocks before. In the Catalogue of the Blastoidea in the Geological Department of the British Museum, published in 1886, Etheridge and Carpenter state on p. 63 that no traces of brachioles have been discovered in any European Blastoid. I do not know of any record since. They are rarely found in this state of preservation even in America, so it seems worth while placing the specimens on record now. Dr. L. B. Smyth records Orophocrinus pentangularis Miller from the Upper Michelinia antiqua Beds at Hook Head, also a Blastoid from the Upper Michelinia favosa Beds, but he informs me he has never seen any of these organisms in the above state of preservation before. Our specimens occurred on a thin shaly layer on top of a limestone in the Supra-dolomite Beds at Doornoge Bay. Like ours, the specimens recorded by Dr. Smyth also have calices which are mainly flattened, so I was interested to find in the Austin Collection in the Liverpool Museum several specimens which are fairly round and solid. Over thirty specimens are labelled from Hook Head. This corresponds with the names in the MS. catalogue which are given as Pentremites pentangularis, P. acutus, P. oblongus, and P. enniskilleni. The last named is also given in the catalogue from Co. Fermanagh.

The years that followed the Great War saw a rapid development in knowledge of the graptolitic faunas of the Eastern Alps. Professor M. Gortani described many graptolites from the Carnic Alps, and papers from the Geological Department of the University of Graz dealt with the same subject, as well as the distribution of the graptolites over a wider area of the Eastern Alps. Especially noteworthy was the surprising discovery of graptolites in the so-called grauwacke zone of the Alps, which follows the southern margin of the Northern Calcareous Alps. In the grauwacke zone, which consists of Palaeozoic and more ancient strata, more or less metamorphosed, graptolites were found at the following localities, (a) Fieberbrunn in the Tyrol (1), where the zones of Monograptus cyphus to M. turriculatus are found, and the presence of M. priodon indicates that higher zones may occur; (b) environs of Eisenerz in Styria (2), where the zones of M. gregarius to M. griestoniensis are found, as well as the zone of M. nilssoni; (c) Montavon in Vorarl-berg (29), where a badly-preserved specimen of Monograptus, possibly M. priodon, was discovered.

There are many reasons for believing that the floor of the oceans, at least of the Pacific, consists of basaltic rocks as distinct from the granitic rocks which form the continents. It is here suggested that this non-uniform distribution of rocks over the earth’s surface may have been caused by the particular kind of cooling mechanism which was adopted in the early stages of the earth’s history. A stage would be reached when granite would separate out as a lighter mass resting on the heavier and still liquid viscous basalt.

Mr. Hills’s paper suggests a number of questions, some of which can be fairly definitely answered, while others seem to me to be worth recording on the principle that the best way to get a question answered is to ask it. The separation of the granitic material into limited regions of the earth’s surface to form the continents could clearly not occur when the earth was fluid, and after the earth solidified any mechanical cause would meet formidable difficulties. Explanations seem to be restricted to (1) a failure or partial failure of magmatic differentiation in the oceanic regions, so that the granite has separated out since solidification in the continental regions, but remained dissolved in the oceanic ones, (2) some mechanical process arising during solidification. There are difficulties about both possibilities. Mr. Hills’s theory belongs to the second class, and I think needs serious consideration.

In Denbighshire the Marl follows the productive Middle Coal Measures and consists of from 400–1,100 feet of red, green, and variegated marls with occasional sandstones and towards the top thin Spirorbis limestone and other limestones, with here and there films of coal. It corresponds with the Etruria Marl of the North Staffordshire Coalfield.