Two years ago at the Bath Meeting of the British Association, I had the honour to present a paper in which I compared the principal known Dinosaurs of Europe with those of America. In this communication I referred to some peculiar reptilian remains from the Gosau formation of Austria, and compared them with certain Laramie fossils from America, about which I hoped soon to have more definite information. As an indication of the rapidity with which knowledge of ancient life is advancing, it may be interesting to know what has been learned in two years concerning this single group of the remarkable reptiles known as Dinosauria. This group I have termed the Ceratopsidæ, and I shall refer especially to the forms I have recently investigated, and hope to describe more fully later on, under the auspices of the United States Geological Survey.

The genus Dendrerpeton was established by Owen on the evidence of remains found by Sir C. Lyell and the writer in an erect tree at the South Joggins in Nova Scotia in 1852. Other specimens were afterwards obtained, and the most complete, presented by me to the Cabinet of the Geological Society, was found in 1861, and described in my “Airbreathers of the Coal Period.” These remains rendered it certain that the animal belongs to the order Labyrinthodontia, and it is regarded by Lydekker as the type of a family in that group.

Among the many interesting issues raised by the discovery of Mammoth remains in large numbers along the Arctic borders of Eastern Asia, one has, I think, ceased to be polemical. So far as I know, there is no serious student who now contests the fact that the Mammoth and his companions lived where their remains are found. The rooted trees upon which they fed, and the southern river-shells which were their contemporaries, both of which are found with their remains (both being incapable of migration), prove incontestably what a score of other arguments show, that the fauna of North-Eastern Siberia in the Mammoth age, like its flora, must be explained by some other theory than migration. This I have urged in many ways in my work on the Mammoth.

In the American Journal of Science in 1877, the writer described a remarkable extinct reptile from Colorado, under the name Stegosaurus armatus, and later a much more perfect specimen of another species, Stegosaurus ungulatus, from essentially the same horizon, in the Jurassic of Wyoming. The latter specimen was in fine preservation, and the more important parts of the skull and skeleton, and especially of the remarkable dermal armour, were secured. Subsequently, more than twenty other specimens of these and other species were obtained, so that nearly every part of the osseous structure thus became known, and only portions of the dermal armour were in doubt. A fortunate discovery cleared away most of the doubt in regard to one species, Stegosaurus stenops, as the type specimen had the skull, skeleton, and dermal armour together when entombed, and almost in the position they were when the animal died.

The interpretation of the sands and gravels intercalated in the glacial drift is one of the most interesting problems in glacial geology. Do they, on the one hand, represent the deposits of one or more mild intervals alternating with periods of intense cold; or were they, on the other, laid down during one continuous cold period marked by such slight oscillations as can be shown to occur in connection with existing glaciers and ice-sheets?

Some ten years ago Mr. Alfred Gillett observed in a quarry of the Lower Lias near his residence at Overleigh, Street, Somerset, a number of broken slabs of shaly limestone, containing portions of the skeleton of an Ichthyosaur. These slabs, which had been cast aside by the workmen, were fitted together by Mr. Gillett, who finally succeeded, after the expenditure of great pains, in skilfully developing from them an almost entire example of the skeleton of Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris, Conybeare.

The Scapular Arch and Fore Limbs.—The scapula is massive, especially below. The shaft is long and narrow, with a thin edge in front, and a thick posterior margin above the glenoid fossa. The distal portion has a median external ridge, and a thick end (Woodcut, p. 242, Fig. 1, sc.).

In 1826, 27, and 28, Prof. Sedgwick contributed to the Geological Society of London his classical papers on the Magnesian Limestone of the East of England, in which he describes in detail the concretionary structures which occur in many of the beds of this formation in Durham.

Although he describes these concretions in minute detail, he says but little as to their probable origin, but it is clear that he regarded them as composed of carbonate of lime derived from the beds in which they occur, when he says—“The particles (of lime), after deposition, appear to have run into lumps and masses more or less crystalline, rejecting great portions of the earthy residuum.” Since Prof. Sedgwick's papers little seems to have been contributed to the subject of the mode of formation of these concretions.

Through the kindness of Mr. A. C. Seward, M.A., F.G.S., the British Museum has been put in possession of a fine specimen of this interesting species, collected by him in the Millstone Grit of Caton, Lancashire. The species is there found associated with Nautilus [Pleuronautilus] armatus, J. de C. Sowerby, Solenocheilus [Nautilus] latiseptatus, de Koninck, Actinoceras [Orthoceras] sulcatulum, M‘Coy, etc. These I have identified in a small collection submitted to me by Mr. Seward.

Geologists are so accustomed to deal with vast periods of time, that a century may be deemed by them as equivalent to the moment-measure of the dial, or the sand-grains of the hour-glass.

In the September Number of the Geological Magazine, 1890, I offered some notes on certain Triassic Estheriœ of North America and Bavaria, and on an Estheria from the Purbeck strata of Wiltshire. An interesting example of E. membranacea from the Old Red of Orkney was figured, but not described. We have now the Rev. W. R. Andrews's other Purbeck Estheria, referred to at p. 389, ready for description; another Triassic Estheria from Pennsylvania; and some most interesting specimens of the rare Estheriella, instituted as a subgenus by the late Professor Dr. Ch. Ernst Weiss.

In the year 1888 I published a short paper in the pages of the Geological Magazine and in “Nature,” in which I gave a brief account of the discovery of the fauna of the Olenellus (or Lower Cambrian) zone in the Comley or Hollybush Sandstone of Shropshire. Since that date great advances have been made in our knowledge of the Olenellus fauna of other areas, and the Olenellus zone has now generally attained an established rank and systematic position in the Geological Record as the basal zone of the Cambrian system.

I Propose in this paper to write a short account of the earthquakes that have been felt in Great Britain during the year 1889, and to consider the relations of these earthquakes with the geological structure of the districts in which, they occurred. The attempt seems to me worth making, for two reasons. The first is that, though few in number and slight in intensity, the earthquakes which visit this country are individually and in their connexion with preceding shocks, of considerable interest. And, secondly, the accounts, even when published, are widely dispersed, and, appearing chiefly in local newspapers, become difficult of access in after years.

In previous numbers of this Magazine, the writer has given the principal characters of the gigantic Ceratopsidœ, or horned Dinosaurs, from the Laramie, with figures of the more important parts of the skull and skeleton. The abundant material now available for examination makes it possible to attempt a restoration of one characteristic form, and the result is given in Plate VII. This figure, about one-fortieth of natural size, is reduced from a large outline plate of a memoir on this group, now in preparation by the writer for the United States Geological Survey.

It has become one of the truisms of geology that India, like Gaul, is divided into three parts, the Peninsular, the Extra-peninsular, and the Indo-gangetic alluvium.

These opinions of Mr. Campbell, however clearly and precisely stated, are so strong and emphatic, that I wish to confirm them by those of another experienced geologist, who worked much among the Himalayas, namely, General McMahon. In “Notes of a Tour through Hangrang and Spiti,” published in the twelfth volume of the Eecords of the Geological Survey of India, he describes the existing glaciers and their remains in the district, and then says: “I do not know whether any one has ever supposed that the Himalayas were covered during the last Glacial period with an ice-cap, but I may note that whilst I saw nothing to favour such, an idea, I saw much to negative it. The contour of the hills and valleys in those parts of the interior of the Himalayas that I have visited is sharp and angular, and where rounded outlines are seen, they are sufficiently explained by the action of subaeiial forces on comparatively soft and friable rocks.

Some time ago the writer was favoured by Monsieur A. Houzeau de Lehaie with the opportunity of studying his extensive collection of teeth and other remains of fishes from the Bruxellian Eocene, near Brussels, and the “Craie brune phosphatée de Ciply,” near Mons. Monsieur Houzeau has generously presented a fine series of these fossils to the British Museum, and the following notes are based upon the collection.

In the year 1874 a letter signed by Messrs. Feilden and Maxwell appeared in the Maltese Journal “Il Barth,” in which attention was drawn to a Post-pliocene deposit, said to have been found in the vicinity of Cala Dueira and II Kala, in Gozo.

In some papers which have lately appeared in the Geological Magazine, I have endeavoured to show that the Ural Mountains, and also the great masses of high land in Eastern Asia from the Altai to the Himalayas, are of very recent geological origin, and that it was probably their rapid elevation which caused the great diluvial movement of which traces are to be found all over the Siberian plains. I now wish to call attention to some of the evidence which points to the American Cordillera being also a very recent geological feature, and dating from the same period of cataclysmic revolution which closed the Mammoth age.

It is a curious fact that one name, America, connotes both of the great continents hung together by the isthmus of Panama. The cause of this is of course purely historical, and yet it coincides with a great physical fact, namely, their essential unity in more than one respect. The generic unity of the old inhabitants of both continents is a peculiar fact in ethnography; but the unity is even more remarkable in this, that the vertebral column which runs north and south through the two Americas is essentially one backbone.

The last two numbers of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society contain three communications concerning rocks which are, or are thought to be, Precambrian. Two of them are in direct attack on work of mine, and the third incidentally opposes some portion of it. The materials of any reply I may have to make are, for the most part, already published in my papers, but the bearing of these facts seems to require to be pointed out.

Taking the communications in order, the first is the Anniversary Address of the President. In this he deals, so far as my work is concerned, first with Anglesey. Sir A. Geikie states that he was not prepared by previous writings for certain results he obtained. He was much astonished to find in central Anglesey so striking a counterpart to portions of the old gneiss of the north-west of Sutherland and Ross.