Corals of the Miocene Formations as means of Correlation.—Although a general correlation has been established between the European Mid-tertiary formations and the Nivajé Shale and Limestone of San Domingo, the shale and part of the inclined limestones of Jamaica, the three coralliferous beds of Antigua, and the Newer Parian beds of Trinidad, still it has not hitherto been possible to determine a close parallelism between any particular European and West Indian Miocene stratum.

The idler picking up pebbles on the sea-shore, and the geologist breaking stones in a gravel-pit, frequently meet with banded flints, which display their markings like a painting on the smoothly fractured internal surface, or, in other cases, in the form of lines more or less deeply engraved on the exterior by the action of the weather. The bands seen in section are often accompanied by discolorations of fanciful shape, in which imaginative people find pictures of their friends and others.

The pebble-bed of the Lower Greensand of Godalming has been already referred to (‘Geologist,’ vol. vi. pp. 53, 54) as a singular deposit, underlying the Bargate-stone series of that neighbourhood, remarkable alike on account of its peculiar organisms and its (probable) relation to other distant, though somewhat similar, beds; its position in the Greensand is fortunately well-marked, being immediately at the base of Fitton's ‘Upper or Ferruginous division;’ or, following the nomenclature of the Geological Survey, at the base of the ‘Folkestone Beds.’ in composition, it may be roughly described as a mixture of sand and small subangular pebbles, either loosely bedded or variously concreted. Its thickness at Godalming varies considerably, thinning out rapidly to the south of the town, but increasing on the north, in approaching the Hogsback, to a thickness of 8 or 10 feet; occasionally passing into, and alternating with, the lower layers of the Bargate-stone.

The earlist, and almost the only published, notice of the ‘Bridlington Crag’ is contained in a single page of London's ‘Magazine of Natural History’ for 1835, vol. viii. p. 355, entitled ‘A Short Account of an Interesting Deposit of Fossil Shells at Burlington Quay, by Mr. William Bean.’ Writing from Scarbro’ on March 30th, Mr. Bean states that ten days previously he had made a geological excursion to ‘Burlington Quay,’ when Mr. Walter Wilson, an intelligent lapidary of that place, directed his attention to a deposit of fragile and broken shells, which the late high tides had exposed on the north side of the harbour, and near the pleasure-ground called the Esplanade. On arriving at the spot, he found a heterogeneous mass, only a few yards long, and as many high, composed of sand, clay, marine shells, and pebbles of every description, chalk and flint being most abundant. The colour and appearance of this shelly bed resembled London Clay, but the fossils had the character of those found in the Crag formation. It would be necessary to collect a greater number of species than he had then obtained, and to exercise much caution before the geological position of the bed could be truly determined; but of this much he was certain, that the shells were coeval with, if not of higher antiquity than the Crag. More than half of them could not be referred to any existing species. The writer concluded by mentioning that he had already made a second visit to the place, in company with Dr. Murray, and reaped an abundant harvest.

In the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History’ for October, 1853 (2 ser. vol. xii. p. 272), there appeared a short memoir on the Lias at Fretherne (Gloucestershire) by the Rev. P. B. Brodie, and to it is appended a Note by Mr. T. Rupert Jones relative to certain Foraminifera which had been obtained from that formation. One of these Foraminifera, an organism of some interest and importance in a palæontological point of view, was partillay described by Proffessor Jones in the Note alluded to, with the provisional name Nummulites liassicus. The general from of the sheel is similar to that of the Nummutlite, though its average size is somewhat less than even the smaller fossil varieties of that genus; and the way in which the specimens are crowded together in some portions of the strata, as though the rock was almost composed of them, may have suggested by its appearance an analogy to the Nummulites in the Nummulitic limestone.

We are indebted to Mr. David Page for having first pointed out two very well marked genera of Palæozoic Crustacea of the family Eurypteridœ, namely, Slimonia and Stylonurus. I gave a description of Silmonia in the ‘Intellectual Observer’ for November, 1863; and I now propose to point out the characters of Stylonurus.

Ely stands on a hill extending somewhat beyond the city as a ridge to the north; and a mile north-east of the Cathedral, at a spot variously named Roslyn or Roswell Hole, its flank is reached at a well-known pit, where the Kimmeridge Clay is dug for mending the river-banks; and the excavation shows some Boulder-clay and Chalk. What the relative positions and relations of these latter deposits may be has been long disputed; some holding that the Chalk is there in sitû, let down by a fault; others maintaining that it is merely such a drifted mass, included in the Boulder-clay, as those which form so strange a feature in the Drift of the Norfolk Coast.† Professor Sedgwick has long been convinced that this latter view is a groundless hyothesis; for when the railway was made from Ely to Lynn, it exposed at about 100 yards off a section showing Kimmeridge Clay and Chalk side by side, and Boulder-clay between them; so the conclusion inevitably followed that there had been a great fault; letting down the Chalk for at least two or three hundred feet. This section was still to be seen in the spring of 1860, when I examined it. The faulted faces of both stratified formations were perfectly erect, parted by a column of Boulder-clay, some twelve feet wide, which from a distance looked like a basaltic dyke.

The identification of the Rhætic Formation in Britain, previously discovered to be intercalated between the Keuper Marls and Lower Lias Shales in Germany, we owe to the labours of Dr. Wright, F.G.S., and Mr. Charles Moore, F.G.S., In the year 1860, the former published an account of the strata beneath the Lias, characterized by the occurrence of Avicula contorta; the latter, in the following year, showing in a most valuable paper the true relation of the sandstones, shales, and limestones to the White Lias above and the Keuper below, added upwards of twenty-eight new species to the list of British Fossils.

The contents of a Geological Journal form as miscellaneous a series as can well be imagined. In its pages all kinds of subjects meet the eye together: the analysis of an obscure mineral on one page; the correction of a stratigraphical error on another: here is a fresh reading of an old text; and there an uninviting catalogue with synonyms. Occasionally the Journal looks like the note-book of a naturalist; and the affinities of a genus, the migrations of species, and the ‘theory of descent with modification,’ are discussed with zealous care: and then, again, we get back to the old times and old subjects of geological thought; and Werner and Berzelius, and their followers, have it for a season all their own way. There is nothing to complain of in all this: it is just what it ought to be; for it shows how wide our subject-matter is. ‘The earth andall that is therein’ — that is surely wide enough; nor will pen, pencil, or graver, till the end of time, have done with it. It is not one of the least of the charms of our comprehensive science, that every one may add something to its stores. A sea-side walk, with a hammer in the pocket, may discover a new world by accident; for, as Darwin, Lyell, and Ramsay have told us, the unrepresented past tunes have been far greater than those of which we have a geological record, and fragments of the missing pages may turn up at any time.

Dr. Duncan'S researches on the Palæontology of the West Indies have so much enhanced the value of any fossils found in those islands, that I do not hesitate to make a few remarks on some Orbitoides contained in a piece of Antiguan ‘Chert’, given many years ago, by Dr. Nugent, to the Geological Society, and to which Mr. H. M. Jenkins, Assistant-Secretary G.S., some months since directed my attention; and also on some specimens of fossiliferous flint and limestone from Jamaica.

In Plate 1 of professor Owen's invaluable memoir on the Archæopteryx (Phil. Trans. 1863) the fifth vertebra behind the Acetabula is seized upon as the first of the caudal series. In Pl. 3, fig. 5, of the same memoir, we have the delineation of a young Ostrich’s pelvis; and in that figure the first post-femoral joint is marked as the commencement of the true tail; eight such joints being, even in the young bird, embraced by the posterior processes of the iliac bones.

Few amongst the Fish-remains preserved to us in the Secondary roacks are more commonly met with than those of Sharks of the genera Acrodus and Hybodus; yet, not-withstanding the frequency of their occurrence, we have but little exat knowledge of the from and affinities of the fish to which these remains beleonged. Their cartilaginous skeletons have, expecting a few fragments, altogether pershied; and it is quite impossible to guess at their outlines, undefined as these were either by scales or hard plates. Nay, more, the remains that are known of these extinct forms present such great differences from the corresponding structures of living fish, that, although a relationship to a single existing genus has long been indicated, the degree of that affinity is still very uncertain.

The Laurentian Group is as complex in its composition as the younger fossiliferous metamorphic rocks; silica, alumina, lime, and carbon compose its beds, together with phosphorus, fluor, barytes, &c.; and it develops the same accidental minerals—staurotide, garnet, pyroxenx, metallic compounds, &c. Why then should there not be in it the buried forms of life? It is found that, as we descend in the great sedimentary column, the organic remains gradually lose substance and form, until they wholly disappear, so that in the group with which we are now concerned (the very earliest we know of) not only has the original substance of the animal and its habitation vanished, but, for the most part, the very form also: and we have the residuary elements of the organisms—lime, phosphorous, &c., in masses sometimes extraordinarily large, corresponding with the extent and thickness of this great group, at least 30,000 feet in Canada (Logan), and 30,000 feet in Norway (Durocher).

This species (under the generic name of Himantopterus)was first noticed by Mr J. W. Salter in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society for 1856 (vol. xii. p. 28, fig. 5); but only the penultimate segment and telson were then known.

In vol. xv. of the same Journal (1859), Mr, Salter described eight species of Eurypterus, from the Upper Ludlow Rocks and the Old Red Sandstone; but he did not refer to E. lanceolatus in that paper. Of these eight species of Eurypterus, E. pygmceus, from its smaller size, is the best preserved species. It occurs in the Downton Sandstone of Kington, in the Basement-beds of the Old Red Sandstone at the Ludlow Railway, and in the Upper Ludlow Rock of Ludford; and I have lately seen an entire specimen (in the cabinet of Mr. Jas. Powrie, F.G.S.), only one inch in length, from the Old Red Sandstone of Petterden in the Sidlaw Hills, Forfarshire.

The object of the present communication is to review and compare the characters of the Tertiary and Recent species of Thecidium, the true characters of which have been discovered only within the last few years. The genus was first named Thecidea by Defrance in 1821, and corrected into Thecidium by George Sowerby 1823.

It is indended in this paper to present a general outline of the Laurentian Formation under the heads mentioned in the above title; dwelling principally on the latter clause, its residuary elements of life, or, in other words, on those mineral substances, contained within it, which at some earlier period have been the constituents of organic bodies. This formation, or system of rocks, which have been called ‘fundamental,’ has of late years very generally received the name of ‘Laurentian,’ a geographical denomination, taken from the country (Laurentide or Laurentian Mountains) in which it has been well studied, and where it exists in vast force. An assemblage of metamorhosed rocks may usually br considered ‘Laurentain,’ when over great spaces (with or without the intervention of the Huronian and Cambrian rocks) it underlies discordantly beds more or less fossiliferous, named ‘Primordial’ in Bohemia, ‘Lingula-flags’ in Wales, ‘Potsdam Sandstone’ in North America.

Everyone who has collected the fossils of the Upper Chalk will have noticed how the Echinoderms and Belemnites are overgrown by small oyster-like shells with a striated disk, commonly passed by as the fry of Ostrea vesiculosa. There is a beautiful example of Micraster cor-anguinum in the Museum of the Geological Society (given by Mr. Bayfield, of Norwich, to the late Daniel Sharpe), on which a dozen of these little shells, each about half an inch across, have left their lower valves; and above twenty are congregated on a fragment of Ananchytes (occupying a space of about three square inches) in the British Museum.