During the past twelve months I have devoted much time to the careful study of those questions that relate to the probable source of derivation of the sandstone and quartzite boulders or “pebbles” that were drifted and accumulated in the neighbourhood of Budleigh Salterton by “Bunter” waters. The detailed results of my investigations will appear in my forthcoming Devonian Supplement. Cornwall and North Devon having been pointed at, as a probable source of derivation, I considered it necessary to study the rocks and fossils that exist in those portions of Great Britain, as well as those that occur in Normandy and Brittany, on the other side of the Channel.

Under the name of Caunopora placenta Prof. Phillips described a fossil which is very common in the Devonian Limestone of South Devon, and which Mr. Lonsdale had described before as Coscinopora placenta. It forms amorphous or spheroidal masses composed of thin concentric laminæ, and perforated by small flexuous or vermiform tubuli.

The evidence relating to the habitation in England at some distant period of a species of the section of the genus Felis represented by the Lynx, rests, up to the present time, upon a portion of a skull and a ramus of a mandible, which were discovered in a cavernous fissure in rocks of Permian age, in Pleasley Vale, Derbyshire. They were found by Dr. Ransom, who communicated an interesting paper descriptive of the fissure and its contents, to the British Association Meeting held at Nottingham in 1866, and the fragments were then referred to the Lynx of Northern Asia (Felis cervaria). Subsequently they were examined by Professor Boyd Dawkins, who, after carefully comparing the skull, jaw, and teeth, with the corresponding parts of other species of Lynxes, and also taking into consideration its geographical range, says, “that they may be referred with equal justice to the Lynx of Norway and Sweden” (Felis borealis).

In the formation of a country three more or less distinct geological operations are concerned:—a. Rock formation; b. Earth movements; c. Denudation. In the case of our own country, to which the present paper more especially refers, these three operations have succeeded each other again and again; so that a very complicated structure is the result. The earth movements and denudations of one period have been interfered with by those of subsequent periods, and any attempt to trace the exact steps by which the evolution of the British Isles has been effected is therefore attended with very great difficulty.

Some twelve years ago I gave (Phil. Mag. March, 1867, “Climate and Time,” p. 548) what appears to me to be the true explanation of that apparently paradoxical fact observed by Mr. Glaisher, that the difference of reading between a thermometer exposed to direct sunshine and one shaded diminishes instead of increases as we ascend in the atmosphere. This led me to an important conclusion in regard to the influence of aqueous vapour on the melting-point ot snow; but recent objections to some of my views convince me that I have not given to that conclusion the prominence it deserves. I shall now state in a few words the conclusion to which I refer.

Having read Mr. Reid's letter on the above subject in the Geological Magazine for June, referring to the Chudleigh district, I beg to offer you a few lines of my own, in hopes of clearing up some confusion that may exist on the subject.

Obs.—As distinguished from Serpulites, the term Serpula is here made to include those tubes which were attached, or in all probability attached by some portion of their surface to other objects, and in which there is an absence of the thickened margins, and the posterior bifurcating shelly tubes of the former. The name can only be used in an approximate sense, for it is quite within the bounds of possibility that any of the species here referred to Serpula may be shown to have other affinities. Already two out of the limited number of British Carboniferous species have been so indicated. The fine rigid siliceous rods formerly called Serpula parallela, M'Coy, are now known to be the anchoring fibres of a sponge allied to Hijalonema, whilst it is more than probable that Serpula hexicarinata, M'Coy, is the corallum of a species of Heterophyllia.

The association of stibnite and cinnabar appears to have been first noticed at El Haminat, in the province of Constantine Algiers, where, during the years 1850 to 1852, considerable quantities of both these minerals have been raised from veins traversing Cretaceous schists. Other localities in Algiers showing the same association are: Ghelma near Phillipsville, where cinnabar in crystalline crusts covers and penetrates antimony ochre derived from the decomposition of stibnite, the containing rock being a saccharoidal limestone; Debar, 19 kilometers to the N.W. of Ghelma, where stibnite is found covered with spots of cinnabar, the gangue being heavy spar; Traia, showing a similar occurrence to the preceding; Tasselemet, where radiating crystals of stibnite occur imbedded in earthy cinnabar.