In a recent inspection of the grand collection of Fossil Fishes in, the Museum of the Earl of Enniskillen at Florence Court, his lordship called my attention more particularly to two Ichthyodorulites, which he believed to be new.

In his recent Tolume on “Vesuvius,” Professor Phillips has added the weight of his great authority to the popular opinion as to the complete internal fluidity of the globe. It may not, therefore, be out of place to examine very shortly the chief argument which appears to have led him to adopt this view, and to discredit that advocated in my paper in your December number, namely, that “pressure, by raising the temperature of fusion” in the matter immediatelybeneath the exterior crust, probably prevents its liquefaction; inother words, maintains it in a solid state, except where some upheavalof the surface rocks, or the production of some deeply penetrating fissure, has by a sudden reduction of pressure admitted of its local liquefaction.

Among the many fossil remains of fishes obtained from the rich Liassic deposits near Lyme Regis, species of the genera Dapedius, Æchmodus, Semionotus, and Pholidophorus are most frequently found in a good state of preservation. These Lepidoid genera are chiefly Liassic, two of the more long-bodied froms, Pholidophorus and Semionotus, having species which occur in the Purbeck (Phol. ornatus) and the Chalk Strata (Sem. Bergeri). Lepidotus, another Lepidoid, ranges from the Lias through the intermediate Oolite and Wealden strata into the Chalk, and according to Sir P. Egerton, “the genus Lepidotus has the most extensive geographical range of any genus of fossil fish.’ With the exception of Lepidotus, Prof. Owen classes the above genera under the Dapedoid family of the order Lepidogamoidei, the genus Dapedius (D. politus) first noticed by the late Sir H. De la Beche forming the type of the family. All the genera were arranged by Sir P. Egerton under the Lepidoid family of the order Ganoidei, and Mons. Pictet placed them in his second family of Rhombiferous Ganoids—the Lepidosteidœ, and under the second tribe of that family—the homocercal Lepidosteidœ, (Lepidoides Homocerques, Ag.), Which he further subdivided into sections, some of which included the above-mentioned genera—viz.

I Have not hitherto seen any specimen so Satisfactorily and finely illustrative of the affinity of Strophodus to Cestracion as that figured in Plate VII. and which is now in the British Museum. It consists of the major part of the dental covering of a jaw, including the posterior part of the symphysis, and shows that the principal or largest, as in Cestracion. These are followed by two rows (at least) of smaller crushing teeth, and are preceded by rows of teeth both smaller and more produced at the middle of their working surface, and in the same degree changing from the crushing molar to the conical prehensile type. This dental coating or armature is imbedded in a block of the fine Oolitic building-stone from Caen, which has taken the place of the dissolved cartilaginous support of the teeth, so as to maintain and exhibit the curve of the arch (fig.1a) by which the teeth obliquely overspanned the jaw to which they were originaly attached.

When we find at the sides of veins, the veinstone rent into laminæ, as I tried to represent in Plate XX. of Vol. IV. it is easy to think of the fracture as violent, and of the disruption of the vein as sudden.

The beautiful fossil Star-fish, which forms the subject of this paper, and is represented of the natural size upon the accompanying Plate VIII., is from the cabinet of Mr. Henry Johnson, of Dudley, the Honorary Secretary of the South Staffordshire and East Worcestershire Institute of Mining Engineers. It was obtained some years since in the shale between the Wenlock and Aymestry Limestones (probably Lower Ludlow shale), at Sedgley, near Dudley.

A Comparison, with corresponding parts of existing species of Castor, of specimens of mandible and mandibular teeth of a large beaver-like quadruped, obtained from the fresh-water deposits called the ‘Forest-bed’ on the Borfolk coast, led me, in 1845, to the conclusion signified by the adoption of Fischer's generic appellation, Trogontherium, for the rodent, which seemed to exemplify “ an extinct aub-generic type” of Castoridæ.

In the paper on Coniferous Fruits I described in detail the structure of three cones which had originally been described as, and all. along believed to be, Cycadean. These cones were Zamiostrobus macrocephalus, Endl.; Z. ovatus, Göpp; and Z. Sussexiensis, Göpp. In making, in June last, a careful comparison between the version of M. Brongniart's important essay, “Exposition Chronologique des Périodes de Végétation et des Flores diverses qui se sont succédé a la surface de la Terre,” published in the Dict. univ. d’Hist. Nat. 1849, and the version in the Ann. des Sc. Nat., Ser. III., Vol. xi., p. 285, bearing the same date, but which evidently, from the occasional emendations, had had a careful and later revision by its learned author than the copy with which I had heretofore been working, I found that M. Brongniart had already referred two of the species to the genus Pinites. On a foot-note on pp. 317, 318 of the volume quoted he gives the following reason for this change: “Un échantillon de ce fruit (Zamiostrobus macrocephalus) qui vientde m’être communiqué par M. Wetherell, établit d’une m.anière bien positive que ce n’est pas un fruit de Zamia, mais un cône de Pinus ayant tous les caractères de ce genre, relativement à la forme et à la direction des écailes, et à la position des graines géminés a leur base. Quant au Z. Sussexiensis, son analogie avec le précédent me paraît évidente.” To M. Brongniart then belongs the credit of having first correctly determined the affinities of these two cones, and they must be quoted as Pinites macrocephalus, Brongn., and P. Sussexiensis, Brongn.

Owing to the great increase of the population of the Eastern parts of London, the East London Water Works Company have been engaged for several years past, in constructing most extensive Reservoirs for the storing and filtering of Water.

The student of fossil botany encounters greater difficulties in his efforts to restore the vegetation of former epochs in the earth's history, than those which beset the labours of the comparative anatomist in his restoration of extinct animals. These difficulties arise chiefly from two causes: First, the absence in the vegetable kingdom of a substance which would resist decay like the solid skeleton found in all the vertebrate, and in many of the invertebrate members of the animal kingdom, causes the fragments of plants which have escaped decomposition to be preserved much less perfectly than the remains of animals. Carbonaceous stains or amorphous casts are the most frequent indications of the former vegetation of the globe; specimens exhibiting structure are comparatively rare; and it is such specimens only that give certain evidence of the nature and affinities of the organisms to which they belong.

The remarkable organs which are frequently associated with the Zamia gigas of Lindley and Hutton, and which have always been considered as in some way connected with the fructification of that plant, are the only fossils that can be referred to Cycadean fruits that have been hitherto observed in the Yorkshire Oolites, in which the remains of Cycadean leaves are so abundant. These organs have been made the subject of an elaborate memoir by Professor Williamson, presented to the Linnean Society some months since, and which it is to be hoped will soon appear in the Transactions of that Society. He has brought together so many observations, made during a life-acquaintance with these beds, that he has been able to re-construct, with every appearance of truth on his side, a singular genus, containing two well-marked species, and forming a new tribe of Cycadeœ very different from any living form.

We do not propose to enter into the questions of the source whence the pebbles of the Chesil Beach are derived, nor of the way in which they are heaped up; these and other like matters having been almost exhaustively treated by Mr. J. Coode, to whose paper we refer the reader for a detailed account of the bank. The subject with which we propose to deal is simply the cause of the formation pf a long shingle-bank, separated from the mainland by a strip of water. This has not been noticed at length by any writer, as far as we know, though three theories of the origin of the bank have been brought forward.

Although the geology of the Midland Counties has been considerably elucidated, still there appear to be some points connected with the position and nomenclature of the Lower Oolites which require re-examination.

The presence of Coal-beds in South America has been known for several years, but the only localities on this side between the Amazon and the River Plate where their existence has been actually determined, are in the two extreme southern provinces of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, and in the adjoining one of Santa Catherina, and in the neighbouring Republic of Banda Oriental or Uruguay.

I Wish, through, the medium of your pages, to call the attention of Geologists to an important point in the Geology of the English Lake District.

In a paper entitled “On Traces Of Glacial Action near Llandudno,” printed in the Geological Magazine, Vol. IV. p. 289, I described certain indications of glacial action (as they appeared to me) upon the two masses of Carboniferous Limestone, well known to visitors at Llandudno under the name of the Great and Little Ormesheads. The principal conclusion at which I arrived was that, “after the limestone hills of the district had acquired their leading forms by upheaval and marine denudation, the whole district was depressed. The summits of the low rocky islets thus formed became capped with ice-fields, which in places descended in glaciers into the sea. At times, very probably, they were united to the mainland by pack or coast ice.” I then supposed that, after some minor changes, “the whole was gradually upheaved above the sea, probably—at any rate, in the case of the Great Ormeshead—not quite uniformly.”

In 1850, Mr. H. W. Bristow recorded, on sheet 17 of the Geological Survey Map, the existence of “conglomerate” and “recent stone” at Portland Bill.—(See Plate XIV. herewith.)

At the date of publication of my “British Fossil Mammals” (1846) I had not obtained satisfactory evidence of the Elk as one of them. But shortly after that period the Tyne-side Naturalists recorded in their instructive ‘Transactions’ the discovery of a fine antler of an Elk (‘Alces palmatus fossilis’ of the ‘Club’) in a Peatbog, near the North Tyne Eiver, Northumberland. I am now able to add to that notice evidence of the extension of the localities of true Elk-remains as far south as Walthamstow, Essex. The excavations of the East London Waterworks, now in progress, have exposed sections of an old bed of the Eiver Lea, near Walthamstow. In this bed, at from five to eight feet in depth, have been obtained remains of Bos longifrons, Capra hircus, with remarkably fine horncores, part of an antler, two feet eight inches long, of a Reindeer (C. tarandus), and in another kind of deposit, as evidenced by the darker colour of the bones, and a thin partial coating of limy matter, were obtained the humerus, antibrachium, and metacarpus of an Elk, closely corresponding with those of the existing Scandinavian species (Cervus Alces, Linn.; Alces palmatus; Auct., and Alces Europæus, Hamilton Smith).

In the June Number (p 251), we gave Messrs. Pictet and Lory's most recent views on the disputed age of those beds which contain the Terebratula diphya or T. viator of Pictet. In order to complete thier views I now publish a letter recently received from M.Héberts, which he requests me to add to the present notes.

But a few years since geologists were in the habit of drawing largely from the Bank of time, and the more they drew the greater was the supply they seemed to want, till at last the thought seemed to come quite natural to them that the supply indeed was inexhaustible. Quite lately, however, these time-speculators have had it suggested to them that there is a limit to the supply, and that the countless ages on which they have depended seem to be very probably but some one hundred millions of years, and untold ages to be reckoned by telling numerals.