The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan territory covers an area of about a million square miles, throughout which the development of communications is of prime importance to the Government. The country varies from barren desert in the north to tropical jungle in the south, and one passes through all intermediate grades between these extremes. In the area between latitudes 12° and 22° north, water is the most important factor in determining the positions of routes, and it is with part of this area that it is proposed to deal. South of this, water is more abundant and other factors have to be considered.

Although small examples of Ammonites are fairly common in the Chalk Rock (Turonian) of this country, large examples are decidedly rare. The only species of Ammonites as yet recorded from this bed are Prionocyclus neptuni, Geinitz, sp., and Pachydiscus peramplus, Mantell, sp. The former species is always of a small size and is not at all common, but small examples of the latter species, averaging 1½ inches in diameter, are often found, and one large example measuring 8 inches across has been recorded by Mr. H. Woods.

A number of communications dealing with the origin and composition of the material commonly known as laterite have appeared in the Geological Magazine during the past few years. That of Dr. Maclaren is an especially valuable contribution to the literature of the subject, and I think few workers in the Tropics will be disposed to question the substantial accuracy of his conclusions. I shall not attempt, therefore, to discuss the general problem presented by the widespread occurrence of laterite deposits in tropical regions. The object of the present brief communication is merely to place on record a few observations made in another area.

Mr. A. Savin, of Cromer, has been kind enough to send me for examination a large number of small vertebrate remains which he has recently collected from the Upper Freshwater Bed of the Norfolk Forest Bed Series at West Runton. Among these there is one little specimen which deserves to be recorded, as it represents a genus not hitherto recognized in the ‘Forest Bed’. The specimen is a right maxilla with three grinders in place, indubitably belonging to the genus Cricetus; in size it is distinctly larger than the common Hamster Cricetus vulgaris (= C. frumentarius), which is the largest species of the genus living at the present day. Only once before has Cricetus been recognized in Britain, W. A. Sanford having identified from the Hutton Cave, Mendip Hills, remains of a small mouse-like species which he referred to Cricetus songarus.

Logan, in 1840, noted the occurrence of pebbles of cannel in the roof of a coal-bed in South Wales; also of pebbles of coal in the ‘Pennant’ rock (Proc. Geol. Soc., vol. iii, p. 276). De la Beche refers to coal pebbles in the Monmouth and Glamorganshire Coalfield, and H. K. Jordan to similar forms of coal in the base of the Pennant Series, and to a coal pebble the size of a hen's egg in the roof of the ‘Rock Fawr’ coal-seam near Bridgend (Q.J.G.S., vol. xxxiii, p. 932). In the roof of the ‘Nanaimo’ coal, in Vancouver Island, a coal pebble in a conglomerate was recorded in 1906. Several instances of water-worn lumps of coal have been mentional in the volumes of the second Geological Survey of Pennsylvania as having been found in the semi-bituminous and Pittsburg regions.

In 1876 Owen described the tip of the snout of a large fossil reptile from South Africa under the name of Tapinocephalus atherstoni. Although a few vertebræ and other bones of the skeleton are known, as no further remains of the skull have been found we have been in complete ignorance of the affinities of this one of our largest Karroo reptiles.

Before the beginning of this year the only records of the occurrence of fossil marsupials in Western Australia consisted of the account of the discovery of Diprotodon bones in the Kimberley district by Mr. E. T. Hardman, the Government Geologist, in 1882, and the finding of a lower jaw of this animal in 1895 in a gully near Lake Darlot in the Eastern Goldfields by Mr. Arthur, who presented it to this Institution. This jaw was so much weathered that it was valueless except for the fact of its establishing the existence of that marsupial so far inland. The Museum Committee sent an expedition to Lake Darlot in 1898, and in 1908 the Hon. Dr. Hackett sent out at his own cost Mr. Young, who was with Mr. Arthur when he found the jaw in 1895. Both these parties were unsuccessful.

My friend Mr. F. H. Gravely during September, 1908, obtained from the ruins of an old wall at Doddington, near Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, the carapace of an Arthropod, the value of which he at once recognized. This specimen he has now presented to the Manchester Museum, and by his kindness I am enabled to offer a short description of it here.

While pioneering for an excursion of the Cotteswold Naturalists' Ḟield Club at Aberedw in the Wye Valley, between Builth Wells and Hay, certain very interesting physiographic features, obviously connected with Glacial action, were observed which appear worthy of record.

In the Geological Magazine, 1904, Dec. V, Vol. I, p. 403, I criticized the view put forward by Dr. Parkinson that the Culm beds in the neighbourhood of Marburg were of Lower Carboniferous or Tournaisian age. Last summer I had the advantage of being taken over the ground by Professor Kayser, of Marburg, and also of seeing his valuable and extensive collections from the Culm of various parts of Germany.

Having now given a short account of the geology of the long line of coast from Yarmouth to Eastbourne, one may say of the first part of it, north of the Thames, that it is, so to speak, most favourably constructed for coast-erosion. Without a single hard or firm rock, such as the Chalk; without anything that can form a nearly perpendicular cliff of any height, no cliff indeed being high enough to give rise to a respectable landslip; composed of loose sand and gravels, loams and clays (the last partly strengthened by thin layers of soft stone), there is really nothing to withstand either the assaults of atmospheric action from above or of the sea below. Such parts as are of special interest or have been subject to special observation will now be noticed.

Situated in the neighbourhood of Birch Tor, in the heart of the granite mass of Dartmoor, at an elevation of between 1300 and 1400 feet, there are a number of tin-mines which have been worked fitfully from remote peridods (Fig. 1). The region is wild and lonely, and has in a marked degree all the scenic peculiarities of the moorland districts of the west of England.

In a former paper the writer endeavoured to show the connection between the sedimentary rocks of Singapore and certain rocks in Pahang. On the occasions when opportunities for geological work in Singapore have presented themselves numerous specimens of igneous rocks have been collected, and it is the purpose of the present paper to describe briefly the observations recorded. It is hoped that this will give some further idea of the geology of the island of Singapore; but apart from a general description the pyroxene - bearing rocks associated with the granite appear to the writer to require a note as being of exceptional petrological interest.

Dr. W. F. Hume, Superinendent of the Geological Survey of Egypt has recently sent to the Geological Department of the British Museum, for determination and report, a few Pelecypod shells of fluviatile origin, directly associated with the marine genus Galeolaria, which he, in company with his colleagues Messrs. Crosthwaite and Murray, lately discovered in the ferruginous beds of the Nubian Sandstone Series of Southern Egypt.

One of the most important investigations carried through by the late C. E. Beecher was concerned with the development of the loop in an American species of Dielasma, D. turgidum, from the St. Louis group of the Lower Carboniferous of Kentucky.

A re-examination of the type-specimens of Phacops Weaveri, Salter, in the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, was recently rendered necessary in connection with my palæontological work on the Tortworth Silurian area, the results of which have been published in the November number of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, 1908 (vol. lxiv, pp. 512–545), in a joint paper by Professor S. H. Reynolds and myself. A question had arisen in the course of our work as to the occurrence of this species above the Llandovery Beds, for Salter had stated that some of his figured specimens of pygidia (Mon. Brit. Trilob., pl. iii, figs. 2, 3) came from doubtful Ludlow rocks at Horse-shoe Farm, Tortworth. The species had, however, been founded by him previously on specimens from socalled ‘Caradoc’ [= Llandovery] rocks from Long's Quarry, Tortworth, and an outline figure of the pygidium, apparently a restoration based on the three specimens in Jermyn Street (Nos. 19220, 19221, 19222), had then been given. Subsequently a head-shield from the same quarry was figured in his monograph (pl. iii, fig. 1). It is clear that Salter based the species mainly on the pygidial characters, for the head-shield is dismissed with a few inadequate remarks, its resemblance to Ph. caudatus being considered to be very close. The original description given by Salter in 1849 runs as follows:—“P. laevis, capite quam in P. caudato, nisi lobis glabellae tumidioribus;—caudâ triangulari, ferè aequilatera, convexa, apice acuto haud mucronato, axi 13–16 annulate, costis lateralibus 10–12, simplicibus, vix curvatis, ad marginem aequalem angustum abruptè terminatis.” In the diagrammatic figure of the pygidium which accompanied this description only 12 or 13 rings are indicated on the axis and 10 or 11 ribs on the lateral lobes, which might incline us to think that an immature individual was chosen for the figure, since Salter in his remarks on the species says (op. cit.) that “young specimens have not the full number of ribs”, but no mention that this is the case is found in the explanation of the plate. In Salter's subsequent work (Mon. Brit. Trilob., p. 58) the tail is described as “broad-triangular, wider than long; the sides a little convex; the apex short-mucronate; the axis narrow, conical, ribbed by about sixteen rings; the sides very convex with nine to ten arched simple ribs scarcely at all interlined; the margin [= border] narrow, smooth”. The italics in this quotation are mine, as the number of ribs is fewer than that given in his earlier definition of the species. It may here be remarked that Salter in his monograph reproduces verbatim the definition of the species published in the decades, with the addition of the word trigono with reference to the head before the word nisi, and with the insertion of the epithet multicostata after the word œquilatera in the description of the pygidium.

In a paper read at the 1903 meeting of the British Association and afterwards published in this Magazine, the method of calculating the chemical constitution of the igneous rocks by the collation of analyses was criticized, and the results were compared with those based on actual field-work in an area where such rocks were very abundant. Mr. F. W. Clarke, whose results and those of Mr. Harker had interested me in the problem, has recently published a fresh calculation of the results of the rock analyses made in the Laboratory of the United States Geological Survey. It is not proposed to discuss these results in detail, and it will suffice for my present purpose to take the question of silica percentage alone. Mr. Clarke's average for all the 1,358 rocks analyzed up to the end of 1903 works out at 60·91. Mr. Clarke, however, admits that the ‘salic’ rocks are more abundant than the other classes, and he further grants that my criticism of his previous results is entitled to some weight, though he thinks that a wider range of observation would probably modify my opinion that granite is practically the average igneous rock.

When the Budleigh Salterton Pebble-bed is traced northward into Somerset it loses its unconsolidated character and passes into a calcareous conglomerate. The change takes place north of Burlescombe, and is complete at Thone St. Margaret; thence to Combe Florey this division of the New Red Sandstone Series is generally represented by a conglomerate composed of pebbles of limestone, quartz, and grit, more massive in its lower part. For some distance north of Combe Florey the upper beds of the division are faulted out and the lower beds are represented by a loose, rubbly gravel of subangular fragments of Devonian grit in an earthy or sandy matrix. The conglomerate reappears at Vellow, near Stogumber, and is found in several places in the Williton district, whilst in other places it is represented by gravels, sands, and sandstones.

In the neighbourhood of Batcombe the Marlstone of the Middle Lias is typically developed, and is succeeded by thin alternating layers of clay and limestone, which are in turn followed by pale-Yellow fine-grained sands—near Bruton, of considerable thickness.