The establishment, toward the end of the last century, of the fruitful conception of the “ cycle of erosion ” carried with it into general currency certain ideas which rest on no real foundation. Although few, nowadays, would be so rash as to doubt the validity of the cycle idea or to question its value as a principle in geology, few can demonstrate any truth in the accepted pictures of the later stages of the cycle. Geographical old age and peneplanation rest on nothing but pure deduction by a few great masters of geography and geology and a blind acquiescence by the rest of us. I say blind advisedly, because only blindness could prevent us from seeing some serious inconsistencies in the picture which have not been generally noticed. These inconsistencies have become increasingly evident in the last ten years. It is time to recognize them.

In 1930 Willard Berry published a paper on the Lepidocyclines of the Atascadero Limestone,1 for which he erected five new species, two of which were megalospheric and three microspheric.

Viewed in the light of the Doctrine of Trends some interesting facts seem to emerge from the consideration of the graptolites characteristic of some of the zones or successive assemblages of these fossils. These seem to illustrate so clearly one of the fundamental tenets of the doctrine—namely, the necessity for a large degree of independence in the different characters—that they may be worth placing on record.

Amongst Mr. James L. Begg’s recent collections of fossils from the Upper Bala (Starfish Bed) of Thraive Glen, Girvan, there are several specimens of the genus Conularia, one of which has the apertural lobes well preserved, which is apparently unique in British Ordovician examples of this genus, and another shows internal structures of peculiar interest. A third new species is closely related to the one which Miss Slater named C. hispida, and a fourth is allied to C. plicata Slater. In Miss Slater’s monograph 1 on the British Conulariae, published in 1907, the following four species were described from the Upper Bala of Thraive Glen: C. cf. aspersa Lindstr., which is typically a Wenlock species; C. hispida Slater, which was also founded on Wenlock specimens; and C. plicata Slater and C. planiseptata Slater, which were recorded only from Thraive Glen.

The Trilobites, which include one new species, here described were collected by the writer from Akpatok Island 1 in Ungava Bay while on the Oxford Hudson Straits Expedition in 1931. The single species of graptolite found there has already been described 2; in addition to the trilobites, there are brachiopods, corals, crinoids, gasteropods, cephalopods, and ostracods, which still await identification. The following species of trilobites are here recorded: Isotelus iowensis Owen, Megalaspis beckeri Slocom, Illaenus eucentrus Troedsson, Illaenus groenlandicus Troedsson, Bumastus sp., Calymene cf. fayettensis Slocom, Calymene cf. meeki Foerste, Encrinurus sp., Ceraurus horridus Troedsson, Ceraurus tuberosus Troedsson, Ceraurinus icarus (Billings), Ceraurinus daedalus sp. nov., Pterygometopus fredricki Slocom.

Scaphopods are of rare occurrence in the Paleozoic of North America. Dentalium and Plagioglypta have been recorded from formations as old as Middle Devonian; however, their occurrence is always sporadic and it is only in the Upper Carboniferous rocks that they are met with in any number. The form here described is the first Devonian occurrence of the Class that has come to the writer’s notice throughout a period of thirty-five years’ active collecting in the Devonian of the Mississippi Valley.

A Patite was first recorded from the Eskdale granite by R. H. Rastall and W. H. Wilcockson in 1915 (I).1 Recently, the author, in carrying out work on the granite, has noticed the peculiar character of the apatites, in that they are mostly of a dusky type occasioned by the presence of large amounts of finely-divided inclusions. Similar apatites have been recorded from the Leinster granite (2), Gault Clay, Thanet Sands, Chausey Islands (3), Jersey (4), the Old Red Sandstone of the Cardiff District (5), and the Dublin district (6), but nearly all show a sharply defined core. The Eskdale ones, although presenting a dense centre, show no clear-cut division between the core and the outer zone of the apatite. Invariably the outer zone of the apatite carries some inclusions.