The group of intrusions of which this paper treats is a part of a series of intrusive rocks piercing the Carboniferous starta of the Midland Valley of Scotland. As a rule, they have forced their way into the Carboniferous Limestone Series in layers roughly parallel to the stratification. At the surface they stand out as rough, craggy hills, often of considerable elevation, rising abruptly out of the plain of the Carboniferous sediments, and frequently ending off in a vertical escarpment of bare rock. They generally confront, at a distance of 1 or 2 miles, the terraced escarpments of Lower Carboniferous lavas, which bound the Midland Valley on the north, west, and south-west.

The Reptiliferous Sandstone of Moray first attracted attention in 1851, on the discovery in it by Patrick Duff of a skeleton of Telerpeton elyinense at Spynie. This was described by Mantell (17), but did not raise any doubts as to the age of the bed in which it was found, which was at that time universally regarded as Upper Old Red Sandstone. This opinion was not disturbed until Huxley showed that Stagonolepis Robertsoni, Ag., was a crocodilian, the allies of which were of Triassic age (9); when Huxley showed that Hyperodapedon occurred in the undoubted Trias of Coton End, near Warwick (11), the point was generally regarded as settled. Meanwhile some footprints had been found by Captain Brickenden (6) at Cummingstone, near Elgin, which were recognized by Huxley to be similar to those described by Sir William Jardine from Annandale. The discovery by C. Moore (19) that the well-known quarry at. Linksfield, formerly supposed to be in rocks of Wealden age, was really opened in beds of Rhætic age appeared to be a strong argument in favour of the Triassic age of the reptile-bearing beds. It had, however, already been shown by Hugh Miller (18) that this mass was really a boulder resting on an ice-scratched surface of the subjacent rocks, hence the evidence drawn from the occurrence of this mass is quite inconclusive. The discovery by Professor Judd (15) that a small patch of a rock identical in physical characters with the cherty rock of Stotfield existed on the north side of the Moray Firth, which was conformably covered by an unfossiliferous series of beds which graded up into the Lower Lias, afforded further evidence of the correctness of Huxley's conclusions as to the age of these beds.

The mountain mass known as the Tarntaler Köpfe, situated about 20 kilometres south-east of Innsbruck, is distinctly isolated from other high ground in the vicinity. The peaks rise to heights approaching 2900 metres above sea-level. The geologic features above the level of 2000 metres are of special interest. The adjacent country is occupied by crystalline phyllites, chiefly displayed on the north, and highly foliated calcareous schists developed mostly on the south of the mountain.

The Hill of Beath, which lies 3 miles to the north-east of Dunfermline, Fife, is an isolated hill with steep, but rounded, contours, and rises fully 250 feet above the surrounding plateau. Whilst the hill itself consists of dark grey tuff, the rocks forming the plateau belong to the Coal-measures of the Carboniferous Limestone series. The latter are thrown into gentle anticlines and synclines, the dip on the limbs of the folds usually lying between 10 and 15 degrees. The outcrop of the tuff has the form of an ellipse, the long axis of which trends east and west and measures nearly 1,000 yards, whilst the breadth of the ellipse is rather more than 500 yards. The distribution of the outcrops of the Carboniferous rocks around the hill and the evidence from the coal workings show that the tuff is not interbedded with the sediments, but that it breaks through them somewhat like an intrusive rock. Sir Archibald Geikie recognized that the Hill of Beath was a volcanic neck, and this view has been confirmed by recent mining operations in a conclusive manner.

Mr. P. G. H. Boswell, F.G.S., has kindly submitted to me a crinoid fragment found by him on August 20, 1908, in the Red Crag of Felixstowe cliffs, Suffolk. Although the specimen is somewhat obscure, it is of sufficient interest to warrant a brief note.

Perplexing as are all problems connected with geological time, there has naturally appeared much more hope of determining the length of the period that has elapsed since the close of the great Glacial episode in the Northern Hemisphere, the period in which, indeed, we may be said to live, seeing that many processes that can be observed in action may be supposed to have gone on without interruption from the disappearance of the ice to the present day. It has proved, however, scarcely less difficult than the other problems of geological chronology. Many methods have been applied, and the results reached have been hardly less varied than the methods.

Professor seward has called my attention to Figs. 5 and 6 on Plate XXVIII, which accompanies his notes on Fossil Plants from Cape Colony. These fragmentary impressions of organic remains have been compared by him with similar doubtful plant-remains figured by Dr. David White from the Coal-measures of Brazil (see Commissao dos Estudos das Minas de Carvão de Pedra do Brasil, Estampa x and xi. Final Report by J. C. White, Rio de Janeiro, 1908, p. 589.) Dr. White had already doubted the vegetable nature of the specimens from Brazil, which doubt is shared by Professor Seward, but the latter expresses himself more definitely against the plant-nature of Figs. 5 and 6, Pl. XXVIII, from the Witteberg Series of Cape Colony. He has, in fact, suggested that they “represent part of a body-segment of a Eurypterid.” In this opinion I cordially agree. I also wish to add a word about the specimens figured under the name of Hastimima by Dr. David White from the Coal-measures of Brazil.

The borings of the Polychæt Annelid Polydora ciliata (Johnston) are familiar in limestone pebbles and the stouter mollusc-shells on our coasts, but shales and occasionally other rocks are not free from their attacks. They may be recognized by the double aperture, often loosely described as keyhole-shaped, leading to a U-shaped cylindrical tube. The union of the two apertures in a single depression, by the loss of the organically formed septum between them, produces a more slit-like opening, whereas if the surface of the pebble be further worn the two round holes are more clearly distinguished. The differences between the burrows of Polydora and those of other lithodomous Annelids, especially the associated Dodecaceria, were clearly stated by Dr. W. C. M'Intosh in a very full paper “On the Boring of certain Annelids” (1868, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. [4], ii, pp. 276–95, pls. xviii–xx).

Having in a collection of fossils from the Lithographic Stone of Bavaria a Ganoid fish, I consulted Dr. Smith Woodward, and through his kind assistance have proved it to belong to the rare species Pleuropholis lœvissima. The species has hitherto been imperfectly known, the only figure being by Egerton of a comparatively small fish, about the specific determination of which there seems to be some doubt. I therefore think the new specimen worthy of description, and it is shown of half the natural size in the accompanying figure. Nearly the whole of the fish is preserved in the fossil, but the head is shown only in impression. Most of the scales are removed from the near side, and the fins are fragmentary (see Plate XIII).

Zoarium, always encrusting.

Zoœcia pyriform, average length, and breadth ·43 mm. and ·28 mm.; aperture semicircular, with a small tubercle at each side; front wall normally formed of five pairs of spines, the space between the lowest pair being filled by a triangular plate perforated at the apex and possibly tubular, as when it is broken off its base proves to be perforated; when there is a preceding zoœcium with an oœcium the fifth pair of spines and the triangular plate disappear, and the space so left is filled by the preceding oœcium, which always carries a small avicularium, possibly a relic of the triangular plate; the spines are not always strictly paired; the backbone is often depressed and pierced by irregular pores.

A Considerable number of species of Tetrabelodont Mastodons are already known from various horizons and localities in the United States. Several of these from the Loup Fork deposits have been described by Cope, the best known being Tetrabelodon euhyphodon, T. campester, and T. productus. A fairly complete mandible recently acquired by the British Museum seems to indicate that yet another very distinct form existed contemporaneously with those just mentioned. This specimen, which forms the subject of the present note, was obtained from Mr. Sternberg, the well – known collector of fossil Vertebrates, who refers to it in his recently published work The Life of a Fossil Hunter (p. 123) under the name Trilophodon campester, Cope, from which, in spite of some similarity, I believe it to be very distinct.

In the report of an excursion organized by the Geologists' Association to Newton Abbot in 1900, Mr. H. B. Woodward stated that a boring had been made by Messrs. Candy & Co. at Heathfield, near the middle of the Bovey Basin, and that it “had been carried to a depth of 520 feet from the surface through clays, sands, and lignites without reaching the base”.

The peculiar garnetiferous rock occurring to the east of Loch Borolan seems to have been first noted by Dr. Callaway in 1883, and is described by Dr. Bonney in an appendix to Dr. Callaway's paper.

In a paper published in 1907, in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London, I described and figured, under the name Zamites grandis, sp. nov., some excellent specimens of detached leaves recently collected by my friend Mr. L. J. Wills, B.A., F.G.S., from the Keuper rocks of Bromsgrove (Worcestershire).

A period of nearly forty years has now elapsed since several bands of Spirorbis-limestone were met with in the so-called Lower Permian rocks of the South Staffordshire Coal-field during the sinking of the Sandwell Park and Hamstead pits in the neighbourhood of West Bromwich. From the published accounts of those sinkings, in the first case by Mr. Henry Johnson, and in the second by Messrs. Meachem and Insley and Dr. Robert Kidston, Spirorbis-limestones appear to have been found at 206 feet above the base of the ‘Permian’ at Sandwell, and at 329 and 795 feet respectively at Hamstead.

The second volume of the Catalogue of Cretaceous Bryozoa in the British Museum, of which the manuscript has been completed, contains the description of various new Cretaceous species. Such, a catalogue inevitably takes some months in passing through the press, during which it might happen that the species were anticipated by description elsewhere. To avoid the risk of reduplication of the names it is most convenient to publish the diagnoses. Fuller accounts of the species, with illustrations, will be given in the Catalogue.

Just over three years ago I described the field relations, chemical composition, and petrographical characteristics of the Old, and also of the Newer, Red Granite of the Transvaal. As then, so now, I cannot do better than introduce this subject with the words of the late Charles Darwin — “Granite to the geologist is classic ground; from its widespread limits, and its beautiful and compact texture, few rocks have been more anciently recognized. Granite has given rise, perhaps, to more discussion concerning its origin than any other formation. We generally see it constituting the fundamental rock; and, however formed, we know it is the deepest layer in the crust of this globe to which man has penetrated”. South and Central Africa furnish no exception. Their granites, which are of astonishingly widespread occurrence, of varying and often characteristic texture, have been classic ground to geologists, as the numerous papers concerning them and their mode of origin and relative geological age well testify.

The necessity of providing a water supply for the town and harbour of Port Sudan has led to an investigation of the district, and some interesting water analyses, relating both to the Valley Fill and to the Maritime Plain, have been made. Through the kindness of Capt. Kennedy, R.E., Director of Public Works, and of Dr. Balfour, Director of the Wellcome Research Laboratories, I am able to quote some of them. The analyses are given on p. 318 and have been made, as indicated, either at the Chemical Research Laboratory, Khartoum, in charge of Dr. Beam (W.R.L., Khartoum), or by Mr. Lucas, Superintendent of the Egyptian Survey Department Laboratory, Cairo (S.D.L., Cairo). A rough map of the district (Fig. 2) shows the positions of the localities from which the samples were obtained.

The existence of a ‘wind gap’ or ‘pass’ at the head of a dry dip valley clearly points to the former extension of that valley beyond the present escarpment; and the depth of the gap is a measure of the size of the valley before being beheaded by the recession of the escarpment. Thus the gap at Merstham is about 300 feet deep, and the valley would probably have continued south some miles on to the Wealden uplands; the floor of this valley falls regularly north, and presents all the features due to a stream flowing in that direction previous to the formation of the Gault strike valley. As an instance of a less developed beheaded valley, the Maplescombe valley, which joins the Darent valley on the right bank at Farningham, may be instanced. The Maplescombe valley has a ‘wind gap’ of possibly 100 feet deep, and so its former southward extension would not have continued into the Wealden area as far as the Merstham valley; moreover, the floor does not slope regularly to the Darent, but is steepest at the head, the distance between each contour-line increasing as one descends the valley, viz.—

The present valley floor, particularly the upper part, is evidently not the one down which a stream from the Weald would have flowed, for at the above noted rate of increased slope the valley would ‘run out’ (or become extinct) at a very few hundred yards south of the present Chalk escarpment, and this short length is not compatible with the excavation of a valley 100 feet deep, such as the present wind gap.

It will be remembered that two years ago, in 1907, I pointed out the occurrence of important planes of overthrust at the base of the Dolomite Mountain-massive of Langkofl and Plattkofl in South Tyrol, which explained its apparent ‘reef-like’ form, and its curious position above Wengen lavas in some places and Muschelkalk at others. I showed that at Langkofl the Upper Werfen Strata and Muschelkalk form a shear-slice above which the Schlern Dolomite rocks of the Langkofl Mountain have been overthrust, and below which the Wengen lavas and tuffs of the Ciampinoi meadowland are present; also that the planes above and below this shear-slice are crush-planes of extremely low inclination.