Specimens of chert-rock from the Productus-chert division of the Permo-Carboniferous series of Spitzbergen are shown to consist largely of detached siliceous sponge spicules, thus indicating the probable derivation of this rock from the skeletal remains of these organisms. The chert is of the same character as that of the Yoredale beds of the British Isles, and it occurs on the same relative geological horizon. The Productus-chert division has a thickness on Axel's Island of 376 m., of which 265 m. are chert, and 111 m. dark siliceous schists, likewise containing sponge remains, but less abundantly than the chert. The chert had previously been regarded as connected in some way with the igneous rocks of the island.

In the Geological Magazine, Vol. II. 1865, p. 401, some account was given of the curious gastric teeth of Ceratiocaris and Dithyrocaris, from the Upper-Ludlow and Carboniferous strata of Scotland and Ireland; and in the ArticleCrustacea, by the same author, in the “Encyclopasdia Britannica,” vol. vi. 1877, p. 639, fig. 13, the relationship of such internal masticatory organs to the stomach of the Crab and Lobster, in particular, was treated in detail.

Shoetly after the great volcanic eruption at Krakatoa,inAugust, 1883, the Royal Society appointed a Committee to collect and sift the records of that remarkable outbreak and to study, the effects which appear to have resulted from it. The investigation of the volcanic phenomena and of the materials ejected from the volcano having been committed to me, I have been led to some conclusions of considerable geological interest, the full discussion of which could scarcely find a place in the report which has been published by the Committee. It is these general results which I propose to discuss in the following communication.

The site of Barnwell Abbey has long been excavated for gravel. The pits have been easily accessible to collectors, and have for many years yielded large numbers of Mammalian bones, Mollusca, and a few plant-remains.

These gravels were noticed by the Rev. P. B. Brodie and Prof Sedgwick in 1838. Prof. Seeley gave a sketch of them in the Q. J. G. S. 1866, in which there was a list of the land and freshwater shells drawn up by Mr. Dewick. They were described by Mr. Jukes-Browne in his essay on the Post-Tertiary deposits of Cambridgeshire, 1878, and in the Memoir of the Geological Survey.

So far back as the year 1820, Schlotheim described in his Petrefactenkunde, vol. i. p. 37, certain Oolitic Crustacea from Solenhofen, which he called Macrourites; but forms belonging to more than one genus were included by him under this name.

We are indebted to M. Desmarest, in 1822, for the earliest description of the genus Eryon from the Lithographic Stone of Solenhofen

We are in possession of so little accurate information concerning Foraminifera of pre-Carboniferous age, that any contribution to the knowledge of the subject, however insignificant it may of itself appear, has a very distinct value. The only notices of pre-Carboniferous examples of the genus Lagena hitherto published occur in a provisional list of Microzoa drawn up by Professor T. Rupert Jones, F.R.S., and appended to a paper by Mr. J. Smith of Kilwinning, “On a Collection of Bivalved Entomostraca and other Microzoa from the Upper-Silurian Strata of the Shropshire District,” in the Geological Magazine for February, 1881; and in a brief allusion to the same specimens in the “Report on the Challenger Foraminifera” (p. 449, etc.); but iu neither case is the notice accompanied by any details.

Some Phyllocarida from the Silurian strata of Scandinavia (Sweden and the Island of Gothland) are represented by specimens in the State Museum at Stockholm. Drawings, casts, or the specimens themselves have been shown to us by our friend Professor Gustav Lindström, F.C.G.S., and we have arrived at the following conclusions as to their relationships.—See the “Fifth Report on the Fossil Phyllopoda of the Palæozoic Rocks”, read at the Manchester Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, September 3, 1887 (printed and issued at the same date), pp. 1–3.

The following account of the geology of the Dead Sea basin A. has been compiled from the observations of others, and I am especially indebted in this connection to H. J. Johnson, Geologist of the United States Expedition to the Dead Sea, to Professor Louis Lartet, Geologist of the Due de Luynes' Expedition to the same region, and to Prof. Edward Hull, F.R.S., Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland, who visited Arabia Petraaa and Palestine in 1883–84, under the auspices of the Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund. Besides these observers, who devoted thei attention specially to the geology of the regions traversed during their several expeditions, the writer is under obligations to the Ordnance Survey of Palestine, and to many observant travellers, including Condor, Fraas, Tristram, Wilson, and others, for many interesting details and attractive descriptions concerning the regions to which it is desired to direct the reader's attention.

The late Dr. Carpenter had undertaken an elaborate series of investigations of Eozoon, based on all the material collected by myself and others in Canada, with the view of preparing a complete and exhaustive memoir on the subject. In consequence of this arrangement the new facts obtained for several years have remained unpublished. Unhappily the work was left at his lamented decease in a very incomplete state.

At the end of his monograph on the structure of Calamites, Prof. Williamson makes the following remark: —“I am disposed to regard all existing specific names and definitions as worthless. They separate things that I believe to be identical, and confound others that are obviously distinct.” The specimen described below affords an interesting example in support of this view.

The specimens which form the subject of the present note were brought to England by Mr. H. T. Burls, A.R.S.M., F.G.S., late Geologist to Rajah Brooke, of Borneo.

It was Mr. Burls's intention to communicate to the Geological Magazine the results of his observations in North Borneo, and in this connection I undertook the examination of the limestone with a view to obtaining evidence as to its age. On his departure for South Africa, Mr. Burls left the specimens at the Science Schools, asking me to make what I could out of them without stratigraphical details.

The genus Æger of Münster was established in 1839, to contain some of the most beautiful forms of Prawn-like Crustacea found in the Solenhofen Limestone of Bavaria (see Beiträge, vol. ii. p. 64). Dr. Oppel, in his Palæontologische Mittheilungen (Stuttgart, 1862), p. 109, thus defines the genus:

The inner antennæ (antennules), with their long bifid filaments, start from three strong basal articulations, and attain in most specimens to twice the length of the whole body. The antennal scales are thin and very long. The basal joints of the inner antennæ are finely serrated along their border. They are much elongated, and project further in front of the head than the outer antennæ, as is the case in the existing Shrimps.

The specimen of which I give below a brief description is of some interest as adding to the store of facts which may help us in the elucidation of the obscure genus Cyclopteris. So far as I know such large Cyclopteris leaves have not been previously figured attached to a rachis.

Near the village of Hoxne, close to the northern border of Suffolk, and about five miles east of Diss, lies the well-known lacustrine deposit from which Palaeolithic implements were obtained more than 90 years ago. This deposit has been so well described that it may seem presumptuous to imagine that there is still anything new to be said about it. But it so happens that every observer up till now has studied the deposit either from an archaeological or from a geological point of view. No one has paid special attention to the character of the associated plants, or to the climatic conditions which these plants indicate.

Of this I have seen only two specimens. One of them, slightly longer than the other, measures 3½ inches in length up to the commencement of the caudal fin, which is deficient in both; the greatest depth of the body ½½ inch, the length of the head nearly the same. The dorsal fin is opposite the interval between the ventral and the anal; both dorsal and anal are triangular acuminate in shape, with delicate rays which at first are somewhat distantly articulated, the joints being ornamented with one or two longitudinal sulci. The pectorals are not seen in either specimen, but the smaller of the two shows a well-preserved ventral, which is pretty large, and acuminate in shape.

During the interval of ten years which has elapsed since my paper on Liassic Madreporaria was read at one of the meetings of the Geological Society, a great many specimens of Liassic Isastrææ and Septastrææ, chiefly from the Vale of Evesham, have come into my hands, and with this abundance of material I have examined a new the several species, and have arrived at the results contained in the present communication. When making these examinations, I have been invariably struck with the absence of a distinct and well defined basal wall and epitheca. Further observation also showed that these Liassic forms differed from other Isastrææ in having occasional elongated calices, like those of Latimæandra.

When preparing my address to Section C in 1886, I had much need of information as to the amount of rounding which takes place in rock fragments when transported by rapid streams. Useful information and references are given in Dr. A. Geikie's Text Book and in De Lapparent's “Traité de Géologie,” and there are the experimental researches of Daubrée in his “Géologie Experimental”; but from neither these nor other sources (so far as known to me) could I obtain what I wanted. I must, however, admit that I am less familiar with the talus heap of geological literature than I should be, and prefer making observations in the open air, to hunting for records of them in a library. So, as I had some opportunities of doing the former during my journey last summer, I record the results in the hope that they may be useful to others; first heartily thanking my companion, the Rev. E. Hill, for constant co-operation and assistance.

The brief paper on the “Stratigraphical Succession of the Cambrian Faunas in North America,” communicated to Nature of Oct. 4, 1888, will have been read by British students of the Geology of the Lower Patæozoic Rocks with especial interest and satisfaction, as it puts an end to a controversy between European and American Geologists, and brings into harmony the sequence and palæontology of the Cambrian faunas on both sides of the Atlantic.

The occurrence of numerous terraces on the mountain slopes over-looking the Dead Sea has been reported by several observers, but no accurate measurements of their elevations or definite correlation of the terraces on the opposite slopes of the depression, seem to have been attempted. In the central part of the Wady Arabah on the west flank of the promontory known as Samrat el Fedan, a terrace, or perhaps more properly a gravel bar, has been observed by Hull at an elevation of about 1300 feet above the Dead Sea. This is apparently a definite record of the surface level of the Dead Sea during a former period. On the sides of the Jordan valley the terraces range in height from a few feet to 750 feet above the river. The measurements reported show great variation due principally to an inclination of the surfaces of the terraces, towards the centre of the valley, but indicating also that they are not horizontal in the direction of drainage.

In 1881 Mr. J. W. Davis proposed the genus Anodontacanthus for certain straight spines resembling Pleuracanthus, but differing in the absence of the two rows of denticles. Three species are included:–A. acutus and oltusus, from the Coal-measures of Yorkshire, and A. fastigiatus, from the Blackband Ironstone of Carboniferous Limestone age at Loanhead, near Edinburgh.