So much attention has been bestowed of late years on fossil organic remains from rocks of all ages, that it must appear surprising to find so little notice has been directed to the Insectremains from the British Secondary rocks.

It is now nearly fifty years since that veteran geologist, the Rev. P. B. Brodie, M.A., F.G.S., published his modest little 8vo. volume entitled “A History of the Fossil Insects in the Secondary Rocks of England” which is still the only separate work of the kind extant. Numerous Insect-remains have, it is true, been described by Prof. J. O. Westwood, Mr. H. E. Strickland, Prof. J. F. Blake, Mr. A. G. Butler, and Mr. S. H. Scudder, from English rocks of Secondary age; and Mr. Herbert Goss has given an excellent summary of our knowledge of the Mesozoic Insects in the Proceedings of the Geologists' Association (1879).

The north-country lamprophyres occur usually as dykes of no great magnitude, sometimes as sills, more rarely as small bosses or laccolites. They are scattered over an area extending from Teesdale to Furness, from Bassenthwaite to Ingleton. A circle thus defined has a diameter of about fifty miles, and embraces all the known occurrences, though others may exist beyond these limits concealed by post-Silurian strata. In the centre of the circle is the Shap granite, and the probable genetic connexion between the lamprophyres and this granitic intrusion has already been urged by Mr. Marr and the present writer.

Palæontologists and others concerned with fossils often X have need of some method of taking impressions of fossils, which shall at the same time be simple and efficacious, and shall also be of such a nature as not to cause injury of any kind to the original. Many different processes have been tried, with varied success. The following method has stood the test of application to a wide range of subjects, and has answered its purpose well in the hands of a considerable number of workers:—

The sound-phenomena accompanying earthquakes have not often been made the subject of special investigation; and, consequently, their value and significance may have been somewhat underrated. I believe that much remains to be done, that many observations must yet be made, before the problem of their origin can be regarded as completely solved; but the facts already known, seem to me sufficient to show that the inquiry is one full of interest and worthy of development beyond that here attempted.

Taking the other and coarser constituents of such slates as are X not wholly made up of the fine “base,”—the constituents which may be spoken of as “porphyritic,”—the lapilli vary very greatly in number and distinctness. In a large part of the roofing-slates they are either no longer discernible at all or are so exceedingly faded and blurred as to be just barely recognizable, often as patches altered to chlorite, or chlorite and calcite, in which the felspar-laths of the original andesitic ground-mass may still be seen comparatively little altered. In cases where there is reason to suppose that the lapilli were largely of more basic nature, this almost complete alteration of them is observed, as might naturally be expected.