The Geological Magazine for October last contains a criticism by Mr. David Forbes of certain views put forward by me ina lecture delivered before the Royal Institution of Great Britain on the 31st of May, 1867. Of this lecture a short-hand report appears in this Magazine for August, besides which a condensed report, revised by myself, is published in the proceedings of the Institution, in the Chemical News for June 21st; and in three French translations in the Revus des Cours Scientifiques, Les Mondes, and Cosmos. The Chemical News for October 4th contains a criticism of my lecture by Mr. Forbes, to which I have replied in a communication recently addressed to that Journal.

In a paper which I communicated to the Geological Society of London, Nov. 21, 1866, (“On some points in the structure of the Xiphosura, having reference to their relationship with the Eurypterida”) I have recorded all the then known genera both of Xiphosura and of Eurypterida, and in the tables which accompany the first part of my Monograph on the Merostomata, I have given both the genera and species with their range in time and space.

It is more than a century since the “Dudley Locust,” or ‘Trilobite,’ was first figured and described, 1 and the locality where it it is found, is rendered famous by the researchs and writings of Sedgwick, Phillips, Forbes, Murchison, Salter, Davidson, and a host of other geologists and palæontologists, who have been attracted thither at various times by the grand geological features of the district or by the matchless beauty and endless diversity of its well-preserved organic remains.

In considering the mutual relations of the sciences of Geology and Chemistry, the student must always bear in mind which of these two sciences is to form the basis or starting point for his inquiry, for this cannot fail to exercise an important influence on his reasonings and deductions.

Some time since Prof. T. Rupert Jones directed my attention to a curious fossil in the British Museum, obtained by Mr. Bain from Styl Krantz, Sniewe Berg, South Africa. The matrix is of the same nature as that in which the Dicynodonts are so commonly found, and exhibits the greater part of the skeleton, but unfortunately not the skull, of a Lacertilian reptile, not more than seven or eight inches in length. It is represented of the natural size in Plate XI., Fig. 1. The trunk is about two and a half inches long, and appears to have attained hardly more than one-third the length of the tail, which is bent round into three-quarters of a circle, and consists of vertebræ, which are very stout near its root, but become attenuated at its termination (a). The centra of these vertebræ appear to have been slightly constricted in the middle, and are about one-tenth of an inch in length. The anterior caudal vertebræ present strong and long transverse processes. The dorsal vertebræ can hardly have been fewer than eighteen or twenty, and seem also to have possessed hour-glass shaped centre. They are for the most part provided with long curved ribs, the hindermost four or five pair of which become gradually shorter. One of two vertebræ in front of the sacrum may have been devoid of ribs.

Most geologists are aware that the Chalk of Antrim, although full of flints and fossils like those in the English Chalk, is a hard splintery limestone, known here as the “White Limestone.” Its induration is often attributed to the action of the basaltic covering which spreads over it, and the coincidence of the two things is certainly remarkable; but I think I can now show that they are not connected in the way of cause and effect.

There is room for considerable difference of opinion as to the limit of the order Pandaneœ or “Screw-pines.” However extended it is made there can be no doubt that Nipa has closer affinities with the palms than with the screw-pines. I shall therefore exclude the remarkable fruits from the Lower Eocene of Sheppy to which Brongniart applied the name Pandanocarpum, altered afterwards by Bowerbank in accordance with the more precise determination of the affinities of the fruits to Nipadites, a change in which Brongniart aequiesced.

The last number of the Geological Magazine contained a translation (by Mr. J. E. Lee, F.S.A., F.G.S., of Caerleon) of two lectures by Dr. Oswald Heer, “On the Miocene Flora of the Polar Regions,” in which the author gives the results of his investigation of the fossil plant-remains from the Tertiary deposits of the north of Canada, Banksland, North Greenland, Iceland, and Spitzbergen. His examination has led him to conclude that, amongst them, there were nine large plants of the fern tribe, 78 kinds of trees, and 50 shrubs. Among these, the remains of the beech and the chestnut, like those of our own island, the silver fir, spruce fir, and Scotch fir, the white pine of Canada, the Sequoia of California, the cypress and Salisburia of Japan, the oak of temperate N. America, the poplar, plane-tree, birch, tulip-tree, the walnut, lime-tree, and magnolia have left their remains where they had grown, attesting a once temperate climate in Tertiary times, where now fields of snow and ice (once believed to be eternal) cover the length and breadth of the land.

Allow me to make a few remarks on the two interesting papers contained in your last number,—one by M. Delaunay, on the Supposed Internal Fluidity of the Earth, the other by Mr. Shaler, on the Formation of Mountain Chains. I wish, in the first place, to protest against the assumption contained in the first paper (pp. 507 and 509) that the internal fluidity of the globe is “generally accepted by geologists,” on the evidence of its high internal temperature. No doubt the arguments employed in that paper go to shew that, whether fluid or rigid within, the precession and nutation of its axis would remain equally unaffected. So far, therefore, the well-known astronomical argument of Mr. Hopkins and Sir W. Thomson, as to its entire or nearly entire solidity, must be considered to be invalidated. But as Mr. Shaler justly remarks in the second paper, p. 512, “the proved increase of temperature from the surface towards the centre, and the extreme elevation of heat which must exist at considerable depths (as shewn in volcanic and other igneous phonomena) cannot be regarded as evidence of general fluidity, until it has been shown that the internal pressure has not a greater influence in preventing liguefaction than internal heat in producing that condition.”

The extent to which a country suffers denudation at the present time is to be measured by the amount of mineral matter removed from its surface and carried into the sea. An attentive examination of this subject is calculated to throw some light on the vexed question of the origin of valleys and also on the value of geological time. Of the mineral substances received by the sea from the land, one portion, and by far the larger, is brought down by streams, the other is washed of by the waves of the sea itself.

Many beds of limestone, belonging to the middle division of the Upper Silurian formation of the Island of Gotland, consist almost entirely of the fragments of a very large and peculiarly-shaped Brachiopodous shell. It may be regarded as one of most characteristic fossils of these Upper Silurian rocks. Perfect valves, giving a satisfactory view of its structure have never been found. When Mr. Davidson, with his usual kindness, sent me copies of the figures and descriptions given by Mr. Billings, of the new genus Trimerella, found in Canada, I had no hesitation in referring both the Canadian and the Gothlandic shells to the same genus. The materials obtained by Mr. Billings seem to have been more incomplete than mine; I have, therefore, been able to make some additions to the description given by him.

It Will interest some of your readers to hear that remains of Bos primigenius have recently been obtained from the true till or lower Boulder-clay of Scotland. The specimens hitherto found appear to have come either from the fine Glacial brick-clays, which are posterior in date to the larger portion of our Boulder-clay, or from deposits of still later age. A few days ago I heard that the navvies employed in making the new “Crofthead and Kilmarnock Extension Railway” had come upon what was described to me as a “wounderful big bull's head.” I lost no time in visiting the locality, and saw the fossil in the possession of Mr. John Strain, C.E., who allowed me to examine it, and was afterwards kind enough to accompany me to the railway cutting in order to point out the exact spot from which the relic was taken. The skull is in rather an imperfect state, and only one of the horn-cores remains, the other having been broken off near the base. The perfect core measures 31 inches in length along the outer curve, and gives at its base a circumferences of 14 inches. The breadth of the forehead between the horns is 10 inches. From the character of the flat forehead, from the origin of the cores, and from the direction and curvature of the remaining one, there can be no doubt that the skull is that of Bos primigenius.

Among the new Oolitic Crustacea to which I drew attention at the meeting of the British Association, Dundee, was a species of Prosopon from the Stonesfield Slate.

This genus was proposed by H. von Meyer, in 1835, for certain minute forms of crustacea from the Upper White Jura of Oerlinger Thal, and other localities in Germany, from whence he has described twenty-nine species, and in addition to these, one from the Lower Oolite, three from the Coral Rag, and one from the Neocomian (see Palœontographica, for December, 1860, vol. vii., p. 183, pl. xxii.)

If any apology be needed for the introduction of these notes in the pages of the Geological Magazine, the excuse we would give is that geologists are, at the present time, being reproached, and perhaps deservedly, for attempting to generalize in cases which, to a great extent, depend upon chemical and physical actions, without having given these sciences that amount of study and consideration which their vast importance merits.

In the Geological Magazine, 1864, Vol. I. p. 150, and 1865, Vol. II. p. 529, two papers of mine appeared upon the strata at Ely. In them, as briefly as might be, are given the sequence of the beds from the Chalk to the Kimmeridge-clay, and the relations of these beds to the Boulder-clay and Kimmeridge-clay on the other side of the pit, where, on all hands, it is allowed to be in situ.

It is some months since I read a paper at the Cambridge Philosophical Society, to which reference has been made in your pages by Mr. Maw. I do not think that I shall be out of order in sending you a short outline of the substance of it.

A few months ago both geologists and archæologists, and especially the latter, were surprised to hear of the discovery in the valley of the Little Ouse, between Thetford and Brandon, of certain cavities in beds of gravel, in which flint implements of the forms peculiar to the Palæolithic or river gravel were found, and which it seemed possible might have been the habitations of the early race of men who formed these implements.

The object of this paper is to call attention to the magnificent head of the Mammoth, discovered by Antonio Brady, Esq., F.G.S., of Maryland Point, Stratford, Essex, in a brick-pit at Ilford, in 1864, and now placed in the Geological Department of the British Museum.

The study of the earliest fossiliferous rocks, as well as that of their animal remains, has been, and will be for a long time to come, a subject of very considerable interest, and one that has, especially during the last few years, attracted the keen attention of several experienced and conscientious observers. Many have been the observations assembled in connection with the direct order of superposition and relative age of the various rocks composing the Cambrian and Lowest Silurian deposits, as well as in seeking out all the data that could be obtained, so as to enable the palæontologist to attempt a correct diagnosis of the very earliest known ancestors of many of our fossils. The discoveries effected by Sir W. Logan amongst the ‘Laurentian’ rocks of North America (as stated by Sir R. I. Murchison) “constitute the foundation stones of all Paæeozoic deposits in the crust of the globe wherever their formations are known;” and with what keen interest has not the Eozoon been welcomed and elaborated—the oldest animal known!

In the following pages, I am anxious briefly to make known certain new facts bearing on the history of the Crags which I have recently ascertained, and also to make some obervations on papers lately published relating to those beds.