The skeletou of a Hippopotamus Madagascariensis, Guldb., in the British Museum (Natural History) has been mounted from materials excavated by myself in the marshes of Sirabé (Central Madagascar) during the year 1895. The skull, lower jaw, several of the vertebræ, and presumably some other bones belong to the same individual.

In the year 1886 the late Dr. G. M. Dawson gave an account of a syenitic rock, rich in a beautiful blue sodalite, which he had discovered when exploring the district near Hector Pass, on the watershed of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, and an analysis of the mineral was afterwards published by Professor Harrington. The place was visited last Summer by Mr. E. Whymper during his examination of the district south of the Canada Pacific Railway, when he collected a number of specimens, which he showed to me on his return. The rock is hardly less beautiful than lapis lazuli, and as no description of its microscopic structure has been published, as far as I can ascertain, I give the results of my examination, together with a condensed account of its mode of occurrence. I am much indebted to Mr. Whymper for placing his specimens at my disposal, to Mr. L. Fletcher, Keeper of the Mineral Collection in the British Museum, for the opportunity of examining specimens of sodalite rock not in my own cabinet, and to Mr. L. J. Spencer, of that department, for giving me his kind assistance and valuable references to papers about the mineral.

Iam indebted to Mr. J. A. Rupert Jones (Lieut. R.N.R.), now at Aden, for a series of rock specimens collected and sent from Perim Island, accompanied by notes and diagrams. From all these I have drawn up a short preliminary account, since they illustrate some points of interest, and no complete description of the geology of the island, as far as I know, has been published.

The ancient rocks of Prieska are extensively developed in Griqualand West, where they build up the elevated Campbell Rand plateau and the lofty ranges of the Langebergen Mountains situated to the west of the Orange River Colony. The order of succession, which is much disguised by faulting and folding, has been described in great detail by Mr. G. W. Stow, whose descriptions render it evident that the rocks of these regions resemble the older strata which extend over such vast areas in the Transvaal.

An occasional visit to a village on the western border of South Staffordshire has given me the opportunity of studying the Triassic deposits around there. Possibly the various sections I have visited are well known to local geologists, although, so far, I have not come across any description of them. One section in particular, I think, must have been overlooked, and this it is now proposed to describe by way of an introduction to the more important remarks which follow from the pen of Dr. A. Smith Woodward.

The footprints from the fissile Keuper sandstones of Chillington comprise, in addition to the ordinary Cheirotherian impressions, two interesting series. A number of fragments of rock covered with worm tracks and castings, show several imperfectly preserved footprints of a small five-toed animal, with posterior limbs of much greater size than the anterior; and three portions of comparatively smooth slabs afford evidence of a larger animal, probably of the same genus, of which the impressions of the feet are preserved with remarkable distinctness. There are also singular reticulated markings upon the surface of another small slab from the same beds, which may be interpreted as the impression of reptilian (? or labyrinthodont) skin. (See Fig. 2, p. 217.)

In his “Acadian Geology” (1868, 2nd ed., p. 563) Sir William Dawson figures Dictyonema Websteri and places it as a Silurian (Upper Silurian) species. In describing the slates from which the type-specimens of this species were obtained he writes:—“Passing from the Cobequid Mountains to the slate hills of the south side of the Bay” (meaning the Bay of Fundy), “in King's County, we find slates not very dissimilar from those of the Cobequids” (which he had described on the previous page, 562), “in the promontory northward of the Gaspereau River. Here the direction both of the bedding and of the slate structure is N.E. and S.W.; but the planes of cleavage dip to the S.E., while the bedding, as indicated by lines of different colour, dips to the N.W. These slates, with the quartzite and coarse limestones, are continued in the hills of New Canaan, where they contain crinoidal joints, fossil shells, corals, and in some beds of fawn-coloured slate beautiful fan-like expansions of the pretty Dictyonema, represented in fig. 196; very fine specimens of this fossil were found by the late Dr. Webster of Kentville. It was the habitation of thousands of minute polypes, similar apparently to those of the modern Sertularia. The general strike of the rocks in New Canaan is N.E. and S.W., and they extend from that place westward to the Nictaux River.

Elephas meridionalis. Nesti. Portion of right lower m. 3. Falconer, “Fauna Ant. Siv.” (1846), pi. xiv B, figs. 11, lla, and “Pal. Memoirs” (1868), vol. i, p. 446; vol. ii, p. 136. Leith Adams, ibid., p. 196. Forest Bed (?) : Hasbro' Oyster Bed. S. Woodward Coll. 5 [1771].