During a recent examination of a collection of fossils made by Mr. George Wild in the Burnley Coal-field, Mr. John Ward, F.G.S., recognized a novelty in the small Microsaurian which forms the subject of the following notes. The specimen was forwarded to the British Museum for determination, and a detailed study of its characters proves it to represent a Microsaurian family that has not previously occurred in the Carboniferous of Europe.

I Regret that I cannot accept as unquestionable the evidence brought forward by my friend Mr. Howorth in favour of the recent elevation of other mountain ranges in Asia besides the Himalayas. I dealt with the latter alone, because I have a slight I acquaintance with parts of them, and some knowledge of the observers whose opinions are quoted. But I argue from the known to the unknown, and if I find reason to reject the evidence on which Mr. Howorth relies to prove the absence of extensive glacial markings in the Himalayas, I am disposed to be sceptical as to that on which he founds his argument in the case of other ranges. I decline to be drawn into a discussion about the latter.

My attention was directed last Christmas to the cellar of the King's Head, in Moscow Road, Bayswater. Some enlargement of the premises was required, and the base of the cellar was to be lowered. About, a couple of feet beneath the old floor, the workmen came upon a block of stone, which resisted all their efforts to dislodge it: and no wonder! The stone proved to be a huge Greywether, of irregular quadrangular form, measuring 9 ft. 6 in. in length and also in breadth, and as much as 2 ft. 8 in. (possibly more) in thickness. A portion of one side appeared to be a joint-plane; otherwise the mass exhibited the ordinary contours of a concretionary block of sandstone. The rock itself was purely siliceous, and presented the familiar saccharoid aspect of a Wiltshire Greywether. Clean sand was found here and there in hollows on the surface of the stone, tending to prove that it had never been disturbed by human agency. It had evidently found a natural resting-place in the basement-portion of the Thames valley-gravel, close upon its junction with the London Clay ; the lowest bed reached in the cellar being “stiff loam.” These facts I was enabled to observe under the guidance of Mr. B. J. Capell (architect and surveyor).

In the June Number of the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, p. 259, Major-General MacMahon deals with my paper on fireclays, etc., and raises, with much fairness, several objections to some of my interpretations and inferences. Some of the criticisms are exactly what I should expect to be made, and were more or less present in my own mind, so that I can well see how they may arise in the minds of others.

General MacMahon appears to have somewhat overstated my views as to the “dynamic” part of the “Metamorphism” in question, owing to taking all I say as equally applying to slates and clays, which is not the case. Thus, the paragraphs he refers to on p. 168 will, I think, plainly show that I distinguish between what has taken place in clays and allied shales, and what has taken place in slates; and passages in my previous paper make this still more evident.

Davidson thus describes the external characters of this species in his Sil. Suppl. pp. 101, 102. The description is practically the same as that which he previously gave in his Sil. Mon. “Marginally of a somewhat elongated, pentagonal shape, truncated, and slightly indented in front, broadest about the middle. Tapering posteriorly. Valves almost equally convex, with a slight median depression near the front in the ventral valve. Beak strongly incurved, and truncated by a minute oval foramen; surface smooth, marked by a few concentric lines of growth. Length 6, breadth 5 lines, but the generality of specimens are much smaller.” Davidson refers to the spirals of this species both in his Sil. Mon. and in his Sil. Suppl. Sil. Mon. p. 115: “I had noticed the presence of spirals in 1847, and recorded the observation in the ‘Bulletin Soc. Géol. France,’ and Lindström has also detected them in a Gothland specimen.”

[From a collection of stones obtained from the refuse-heaps of the Kimberley Mines by Mr. Louis Atkinson, a selection was made by Prof. T. Rupert Jones and, by kind permission of Prof. Bonney, was submitted to him for examination, in packets marked I.—VIII. and X. Specimen No. IX. was sent many years ago, as a traprock with garnets from the Vaal River, by Mr. Robert Crofts Jones.—T. R. J.]

The retention of the original colour-markings amongst fossil Brachiopoda is a somewhat rare occurrence: the following striking instance therefore seems worthy of record.

It is true that Deslongchamps in the Paléontologie Française mentions the colours of a number of Jurassic Brachiopods, but in nearly all these cases the colours are spoken of as if uniformly distributed and not patterned over the shells, and therefore we cannot be sure that they are original and not subsequently produced.

Of British fossil Brachiopods which show the colour-markings, Terebratula hastata and Discina nitida respectively from the Carboniferous Limestone of Longnor, Derbyshire and Hamilton, Scotland, Terebratula intermedia from the Cornbrash of Wollaston, and Terebratula biplicata from the Upper Greensand of Cambridgeshire, are examples.

In the Palæontology of the Vertebrata, so much progress is made in various directions in Britain, that it seems advisable to attempt to bring up to date the record of the subject prepared and published by the writers a year ago. The following list may thus be regarded as the first supplement to the work in question; and it is hoped, by the courtesy of the Editor, to issue such a list of additions annually in the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE.

The growing interest in the evolution of the Continent now calls for more accurate information than formerly regarding the changes of level of land and sea in recent geological times. The amount of these oscillations was one of the most important factors in the investigation of the “Building of the Great Lakes.” Hence the study of the history of the lakes has contributed to our knowledge of the changing relations of the continent and the sea.

Since visiting the Volcanic region of Central and Southern Italy in the autumn of last year, I have been much exercised from time to time as to some of the conditions which produce, and sustain volcanic activity. It seems to be an undoubted fact that water coming into contact with highly heated rock is one of the most important requisites to produce, and sustain a volcanic eruption. The difficulty has been to explain how water is introduced.

A conglomerate in the Keuper. —Whilst a drain was being cut in Argyle Street, joining Upper and Lower Eastvilles, one of the upper beds exposed consisted of a rather fine conglomerate, made up largely of rolled quartz pebbles of small size, compacted with rounded quartz sand and intermixed with coloured fragments (generally very small flakes) of softer shale or clays. I did not measure the thickness very carefully, but I should think that it did not exceed six inches, and as the drain is now filled up, the means of more accurate measurement are lost. The distance from the nearest denuded edge of the Coal-measures is as nearly as possible half a mile.

The alteration undergone by the Coniston Flags, owing to the intrusion of the Shap granite, has been well and fully described by Messrs. Harker and Marr in their most able and interesting paper, read before the Geological Society in the spring of this year, “The Shap Granite and the Associated Igneous and Metamorphic Rocks” (Q.J.G.S. vol. xlvii. 1891).

I have worked a great deal, microscopically, on the rocks of this district, both before and since the publication of the results of Harker and Marr, and this work has enabled me in a special manner to appreciate the quality and value of their investigations in this complicated and interesting region. I was so fortunate, two summers ago as to spend some time at Shap with Mr. Marr, who most kindly assisted me to understand some of the problems involved, and pointed out to me the places where specimens of special interest could be collected.

Time of occurrence, 22h. 36 m.: Intensity, VI. Epicentrum about two miles N.N.E. of Bolton, half a mile west of the village of Bradshaw.

This interesting earthquake affected a district for the most part thickly populated, and the accounts of it are consequently numerous. In the newspapers mentioned below, records are given of observations from 156 towns and villages, situated within a nearly circular area about 55 miles in diameter. Considering the smallness of this area, I suppose that but few previous earthquakes have afforded materials so abundant for the seismologist.