The publications of the 600th Number of the Geological Magazine completes fifty years of its existence, and the Editor gladly avails himself of the occasion to express to his numerous friends and colleagues his most cordial thanks for their unfailing and generous support since 1864. Without their aid he would have been on many occasions at a loss to sustain the difficult task of providing for the monthly issue of the Magazine through so many years.

It is very gratifying to the Editor that the Rev. Osmond Fisher, M.A., F.G.S., Sir Archibald Geikie, K.C.B., P.P.R.S., F.G.S., Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, M.A., D.Sc., F.R.S., and Professor Edward Hull, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., F.G.S. (who represent the contributors to the 1864 volume) have sent him letters of congratulation on his Jubilee; for, alas! by far the larger number of the early friends and supporters of the Geological Magazine have “joined the majority”. The ranks of the geologists have, nevertheless, maintained their strength, as will be seen by a reference to the retrospect of the work in the forty years from 1864 to 1903, in which a splendid record is furnished of geological and palæontological contributions, summarized by the late Horace B. Woodward and the Editor. The subsequent decade (1904–14) has been no less prolific in good work. Indeed, one may venture to maintain that the quality of the contributions in these later years has been distinctly in advance of those preceding them; whilst the illustrations have increased very greatly both in numbers and excellence.

During a detailed examination of the tests, and in particular of the ambulacra, of the common British species of the Echinoidea Holectypoida, I have found two series of structures the correlation of which, with those known in recent forms, seems difficult. Since I am engaged in the preparation of a description of the British Pygasteridæ, I have thought it advisable to publish now an account of these peculiar features, in the hope that others may be able to throw light on points that seem to me obscure.

The available information regarding the fossil plants of Southern Nigeria is of the meagrest description. Consequently great interest lies in the collections of fossil plants brought back from Nigeria last year by Mr. A. E. Kitson, F.G.S., and it seems worth while to publish a brief account of what appears to be a new species of Monocotyledon from among them.

Our knowledge of the structure of the cuticle of Coal-measure plants is very meagre in comparison with the amount of information recently published as to the cuticular characters of Mesozoic genera. So far as I know, no detailed descriptions have been published of the cuticles of British Palæozoic plants. Professor Zeiller1 has described a few cuticles of French Carboniferous plants, and Dr. Huth2 recently gave an account of the cuticle of Mariopteris muricata, but very little has so far been attempted in this branch of research. The present preliminary account deals with material obtained by Mr. L. J. Wills from the Middle Coal-measures of the Denbighshire Coal-field near Chirk and from the Old Hill Marls (Etruria Marls ?) in the Upper Coal-measures of South Staffordshire. The cuticles are preserved as brown films in clayey shales, approaching fireclays in composition, none having yet been found in carbonaceous or sandy shales. It is hoped that this note will incite collectors to search for further specimens in this state of preservation.

1. The Speeton Clay of Yorkshire contains abundant Foraminifera in the beds named by Mr. Lamplugh B (base), C10, and C2; but the specimens examined from the other subdivisions of F, E, D, and C either do not contain any Foraminifera or they are present in small numbers only.

2. Two new species, Cristellaria chapmani, Pulvinulina lamplughi, and a new variety, Lagena apiculata, var. danfordi, occur and are described. Forty-four species belonging to sixteen genera have been found.

3. The characteristic of the Foraminiferal fauna of the Speeton Clay is the great predominance of Pulvinulina caracolla (Roemer) over all other species.

4. Twenty-five per cent of the species of Foraminifera occur also in the Hils of North Germany, 35 per cent in the Red Chalk of Speeton, 40 per cent in the Bargate Beds of Surrey, and 58·5 per cent in the Gault of Folkestone.

5. Dimorphism is clearly shown by P. caracolla (Roemer). Previously it has been stated to occur among the Pulvinulinæ in P. partschiana, d'Orb., but no case has been described.

6. Notes are given on the microscopical characters of the sediments.

Zoarium unilaminate, adherent.

Zoæcia convex, quite separate, very small, average length .35 to .38 mm. and width .2 mm.; numerous radiating imperforate lines are faintly perceptible on some of them in a suitable light, and were doubtless present on all; they are hardly ‘furrows’, resembling rather superficial cuts; apertures very slightly heel-shaped.

Oæcia abundant, relatively large, globose with a strongly concave free edge.

In his Last Journals, referring to the formations of Portuguese Nyasaland west of the Lugenda River, Livingstone writes: “The elevated plains among these mountain masses show great patches of ferruginous conglomerate, which, when broken, looks like yellow hæmatite with madrepore holes in it.” He also notes that the same formation is responsible for the prevailing reddish tint assumed by the soil. In Mozambique, the province of Portuguese East Africa south of Nyasaland, lateritic deposits of the kind described by Living-stone are very abundant. In view of the wide interest which the superficial deposits known as laterite have aroused among geologists during recent years, no excuse seems necessary for placing on record a few notes dealing with their modes of occurrence and associations in Mozambique. The country was explored during the year 1911, Mr. D. A. Wray, Mr. E. J. Wayland, and myself accompanying the expedition as geologists. My former colleagues have kindly placed their notes on the superficial deposits of Mozambique at my disposal, and I wish here to express my indebtedness to them for the help thus afforded.

A Small group of English Membranipora is strongly characterized by the possession of interstitial avicularia having one end raised into a smooth hood. No described species seems to possess such avicularia, except perhaps the form figured by d'Orbigny as Membranipora concatenata.

My interest in cleat was first aroused by the study of the Geological Survey memoir on the coals of South Wales (1908), from which it became clear to me that the subject of the origin of anthracite was intimately bound up with that of cleat. The object of the present communication is, however, not directly connected with the anthracite question, upon which I hope to have something to say when researches upon which I am engaged with Mr. E. J. Edwards, M.Sc., of Cardiff, have reached a more advanced stage.

Like so many of the islands of the Mediterranean the Balearic group has yielded interesting remains of an extinct Pleistocene fauna. These have been discovered in cave breccias and in fissures of which a brief description may be of interest.

Previous to 1909 the only record of the occurrence of any Pleistocene mammalian remains in the Balearic Islands was, I believe, that of De la Marmora, who mentioned indications of a bone breccia in the hill of Belver, near Palma, where he observed a bone which appeared to be that of a Lagomys or a rabbit. Since then, as the result of three short visits undertaken by the writer, a quantity of ossiferous remains have been obtained from the caves and fissures of Mallorca and Menorca. It may be mentioned that I failed to locate the breccia recorded near Belver.

This form was first made known in 1897, by the late J. F. Whiteaves, in a paper entitled “Description of a new genus and species of Cystideans from the Trenton Limestone at Ottawa” (Canad. Rec. Sci., vol. vii, No. 5, pp. 287–92). This part bears on the wrapper the date “January, 1897”, which is obviously erroneous, since the author dated his own contribution “April 28th, 1897”, and copies of it were first received in London on July 31 of that year.

The Geological History of the Thames is still the subject of conflicting hypotheses. Mr. F. W. Harmer (1907) has drawn a very interesting parallel between the basin of the Middle Thames around Oxford and the Vale of Pickering in Yorkshire. The latter, as is well known from Professor Kendall's paper (1902), was occupied by a glacial lake which was due to the Derwent River having had its outlet to the sea south of Scarborough closed by a dam of ice; the water rose in this lake until it overflowed at a gap near Malton; the river thus formed cut a gorge through which the drainage from the Vale of Pickering flows south-westward into the Yorkshire Ouse, and reaches the sea through the Humber. According to Mr. Harmer the Upper Thames originally discharged north-eastward through the Fens into the Wash; this outlet was blocked by the ice; the waters of the Upper Thames collected as a lake, which was discharged by overflow channels cut through the Chiltern Hills, and as the lake-level fell the discharge was maintained only through the Goring Gap at the south-western end of the Chiltern Hills. This view advances a different explanation of the Chiltern wind gaps than that advocated in a paper in 1894, and is opposed to the theory of the evolution of English rivers adopted by Professor W. M. Davis in 1895.

In a report on a visit of the Geologists' Association to the exhibits of Polyzoa and Corals in the Geological Department of the British Museum in February, 1913, the author had occasion to mention two related and unnamed species of uniserial Chalk Polyzoa that hitherto had appeared in records as Hippothoa dispersa (von Hagenow). neither of which was this species, nor did either belong to the genus Hippothoa, Lamouroux. Since one of these two forms is very common in the English Chalk and the other not rare, it is time for a description of them to be published, that collectors may have distinctive names for them. In addition, a third form that has occurred in England is described, and the rest of the species included in the genus are mentioned, so that an idea of the genus as a whole may be formed.

The group of Membraniporæ, with a small median barred avicularium placed immediately above the oæcium, of which M. Griffithi, Bryd., is a leading instance, contains several Senonian members in addition to the Trimingham forms (M. Triminghamensis, M. anterides, M. humiliata) which I have already described in this Magazine. They seem to arise first in the zone of Micraster cor-anguinum.

Membranipora Simulacrum, sp. nov. (Pl. XXVI, Figs. 1, 2.)

Zoarium unilaminate, always adherent.

Zoæcia large, very slightly subpyriform, areas oval, with average length .5 to .55 mm. and breadth .3 mm.; side walls bent slightly inwards, and so low and slender that at a hasty inspection they might be taken to be mere ghosts of some species with a low arched front wall.

The island of South Georgia is nine hundred miles S. 80° E. from the Falkland Islands. The coastline of the island is rock-bound and more or less precipitous, and there is neither open beach nor detrital flat on its outward margin. A narrow valley, a morainic flat, inside Cumberland Bay, runs up 4 miles to a glacier, and there are other patches of morainic material, marking the recession of the glaciers. Leith Harbour is one of these, and Elsie and Adventure harbours, originally enlarged by the ice into one channel, have been separated into two safe anchorages by morainic material.

The thrips described herein was submitted to me by Professor Branca of the Geologisch-Palaeontologisches Museum, Berlin, and is one of a small collection of three examples in Baltic Amber. The genus is curious on account of the abnormal tube-like development of the tenth abdominal segment, which, however, is open ventrally for its entire length. In the form of the antennæ, so far as can be ascertained from the single example and the structure of the wings, Stenurothrips would seem to show affinity with the Neotropical genus Heterothrips, and for the present I regard the genus as falling in the Heterothripidæ.

The SgÙrr of Eigg first attained to geological prominence in 1865, when Sir Archibald Geikie in his delightful account of the Scenery of Scotland offered a novel and altogether captivating theory to account for its origin [1]. According to Geikie, as all well know, the precipitous ridge of pitchstone, which culminates at its eastern extremity in the SgÙrr, is the inverse of an ancient valley sunk by a winding river in the basaltic plateau of the west. Before the development of this river channel, so the theory runs, the sources which had supplied the basalt lava of the plateau had already become extinct; but volcanic activity was not yet entirely banished from the region, and presently a great outpouring of acid lava, entering the valley, flowed for miles along its course, gradually choking it, perhaps even to the brim. The resulting pitchstone has stood the test of time much more securely than the neighbouring basalts, for while these latter have wasted to a level in general lower than that of the old valley floor, the pitchstone itself still remains in large measure unaffected, and thus furnishes a somewhat battered cast of the erstwhile hollow.

From the foregoing analyses there is little doubt that the rock is a hornblende-quartz-keratophyre. The term porphyrite, however, has been adopted in the mapping for convenience. It is worthy of note that a very similar rock, though greenish in colour, has been already described from Kanowna by the writer. In the latter, silica amounted to more than 71 per cent, while soda reached 7.85 per cent; potash was again absent.

12237, G.M.L. 4458 E., Hyman North.

M. Stanislas Meunier, in a paper entitled “Examen Chimique d'eaux minérales provenant de Malaise. Mineral d'etain de formation actuelle”, describes analyses of two waters brought by M. J. Errington De la Croix from Ayer Panas and Cheras, Malay Peninsula, and also of a mineral specimen found in one of the springs.

The highest beds of the Carboniferous rocks of Wensleydale are found on the summit of Great Shunner Fell, which is situated on the watershed between Wensleydale and Swaledale, and forms the high ground to the west of the Buttertub Pass on the road between Hawes and Muker.