Among the vast additions which, during the past five years, have been made to the palæontological collections in the British Museum (Natural History), none probably possess greater interest to the naturalist and comparative anatomist than the remains of the very remarkable group of aquatic phytophagous mammals known as the Sirenia, of which the “Manatee” and the “Dugong” are the living representatives.

This is the third of M Coy's original species. The specimen in the Cambridge Museum has its carapace ovate-oblong or somewhat boat-shaped in outline, 50 mm. (2 inches) long, 18 mm. high; moderately convex; straight or very slightly arched above and more strongly arched below (both edges are partly imbedded in the matrix of the original specimen, b/5, M Coy's fig. 4). The anterior end (damaged) was neatly rounded, sloping up gracefully from below. The posterior is obliquely truncate from above downwards and outwards, with the postero-dorsal angle distinct, and the posteroventral angle prominent and blunt. There is no eye-spot. Traces of longitudinal striæ are visible on the impressions of the valves in the grey, micaceous, Upper-Ludlow sandstone, from Benson Knot, near Kendal, Westmoreland; two specimens (one of them good) are in the British Museum, No. 44342, from the same locality.

During the year 1883 I gave some account, in the pages of this Magazine, of the peculiarities of the water drawn from the Bagshot strata of the London Basin. The most important conclusion drawn in that paper from the evidence adduced was the great difference in the quality of the water according as it is obtained either (a) from the bright ferruginous sands of the Upper Bagshots, or (b) from the Middle or Lower Bagshot strata, which are all contaminated (more or less) by vegetable matter in various stages of decomposition. So far as the evidence in my possession a year ago seemed to carry me, I felt warranted in making the following generalization: “The whole of the well-water of the district which common human experience pronounces wholesome is obtained from the Upper ferruginous sands.” This has been confirmed by additional facts more recently learnt.

In 1883 a scattered group of five boulders was met with in the workings of the Coleorton Colliery in the “Lount Nether” coal, at a depth from the surface of about 375 feet. They were all entirely enveloped in the coal, and occurred about 20 inches from the top of the seam. Four of them were found within a space of 20 yards of one another, but no two of them very near together, and the fifth occurred some 500 yards S.W. of the others. The coal-seam was of its normal thickness—namely, about 4½ feet. This is the seam marked “Lount 4” upon the Geol. Survey Sheet No. 46 of Horizontal Sections, and it is the lowest but one worked in the district.

Mr. Jukes-Browne's proposed classification of our rock groups, in the July Number of the Geological Magazine, is a commendable attempt to solve an important question, especially where he proposes to establish divisions on palæontological evidence, in preference to depending upon minor breaks in the succession, which must always be more or less local

By the kind intervention of Sir William Dawson, the Rev. H. H. Higgins has sent me two new Carboniferous Insects of sufficient interest to bring to the attention of English palæontologists. They are both preserved in the Liverpool Museum, one having been presented to it by Major Chambers as long ago as January, 1858; while the other was mentioned by Mr. Higgins in his presidential address to the Liverpool Naturalists' Field Club in 1871, figured on the plate of the Ravenhead fossils in the Liverpool Museum (fig. 15) which accompanies it. Both the wings are gigantic.

Of all groups of fossil reptiles, there is perhaps none in greater need of critical revision than that comprising the Crocodilia. The remains of this order already discovered are so numerous, and the various descriptive accounts of them so scattered and disconnected,—so commonly has it been the custom to take advantage of each successive “find” for the manufacture of a new generic or specific name, however fragmentary the materials, and so frequently have species been imperfectly compared and characterized,—that a most intricate and perplexing synonymy has arisen, which it would require long-continued research by the profoundest of specialists to unravel. Moreover, cases are not unknown, in which type specimens have subsequently proved to be unfortunate restorations, and the occasional disregard of priority in nomenclature has also contributed to increase the confusion.

Up to December last the most ancient fossil insects known were the six fragments of Neuroptera, obtained by Mr. C. F. Hartt, from the Devonian rocks of New Brunswick, which were described by Mr. Scudder in Vol. V. of this Magazine. Although these six fossils were the oldest known insects, it seemed unlikely that they, or even the families or genera to which they belonged, were the most ancient representatives of their class. The first appearance of insects on the Earth was probably contemporaneous with that of land plants, and as remains of this division of the Vegetable Kingdom had been discovered in Silurian rocks, it seemed not unreasonable to assume that insects might have existed at an earlier period than the Devonian. The recent discovery of the wing of a cockroach in rocks of Silurian age at Jurques, Calvados, France, no longer leaves the question of the occurrence of insects at an earlier period than the Devonian a matter of speculation.

A Cave in the south escarpment of the Great Ormes Head has been in gradual processof exploration by a person named Kendrick. In its silt and breccia he has discovered fragments of human skeletons, indicating by their dimensions that the individuals to whom they belonged were about five feet six inches in height. Some of their tibiæ are still to be seen imbedded in situ. There has also been found a considerable quantity of swine's teeth, each marked on the fang with fromfour to six transverse lines, and perforated at the extremity with a hole throughwhich ran probably a tendon of a reindeer or some other ligament stringing them together as a necklace. There is a similar one, composed of human teeth, in the Christie Collection in the British Museum, worn by the inhabitants of the Solomon Islands. From the same cave deposit there have been extracted several bears' teeth, with a hole in each of them for their suspension as ear-rings, and two lower equine jaws with the enamel of the four incisors highly polished, and with zigzag marks on the surfaceof the maxillary bone. These were probably hung also from the necks of the cave-men as ornaments. The wholecavern, or a portion of it, has been considered to have formed a burial-place for someIberian tribe; but the careless and irreverent manner in which the dead in it appear tohave been disposed of seems to indicate that it might have been the habitation of a raceof cave-men akin to the Eskimos, whom Professor Boyd Dawkins, in his“Early Man in Britain,” describes as so indifferent to the sepulture of their deceased relatives that they sometimes cover up their bodies with snow and leave them to be eaten by dogs or foxes.The cave, which contains a natural reservoir of water, has only been partially excavated, and further researches seem most desirable, as they might lead to the finding of very important relics of its original inhabitants, as well as settleany doubts which may have arisen as to the accuracy of the present explorer's statement, on which the truth of the discovery of the above-mentioned remains in that particular cave rests.

This interesting series of ancient volcanic rocks is described by the late Mr. Clifton Ward in a paper on the Microscopic Structure of Ancient and Modern Volcanic Rocks, read before the Geological Society, in a Memoir of the Geological Survey on the Lake District, and, in greater detail, in a communication to the Royal Microscopical Society. All these are illustrated by figures (in no case very good) and some chemical analyses are given in the last-named paper. I went to the hill in the autumn of 1874 and collected a few specimens, but my visit was cut short by heavy rain. A few weeks since Mr. J. Postlethwaite of Keswick, to whose kindness I have been more than once indebted for additions to my collection, forwarded to me three specimens from Eycott Hill, thinking that I might not have any rocks therefrom, and called my attention to the peculiar reddish tint of the felspar in one of them, which, as he remarked, “resembled the colour of a garnet.” These were varieties of the well-known porphyritic lava of Eycott Hill, which is described by Mr. Ward as the second lava bed in ascending order, and as being above 100 feet thick. This specimen was obtained from a boulder on the hill. On examining it and comparing it with my own (at which I had not looked for some years), I was struck with the appearance of the ground-mass, which seemed to me unusually compact and more like that of an augite-andesite, than of a dolerite or diabase, as the rock is named by Mr. Ward. I had a slide prepared by Mr. Cuttell from Mr. Postlethwaite's specimen, in which I first discovered the mineral which is described in this note, and have since had some more cut from my own specimens from Eycott and others subsequently sent by him, and (for comparison) from the lavas of Falcon Crag near Derwentwater.

A few years ago I described some remains of Antelopes from the Pliocene Siwaliks of India, when I employed the generic term Antilope in the wide sense in which it was used by the older zoologists and palæontologists. At a later date I was enabled to refer two of the species thus designated to two of the genera of Antelopes as at present classed; and at the same time mentioned some other forms. A recent examination of all the remains of this group from the same deposits contained in the British Museum has enabled me to make a more exact determination in the case of another of the species mentioned in my first notice, and also to indicate the existence of other forms closely allied to existing African Antelopes. These new forms I hope to have an opportunity of describing on a future occasion, and, therefore, now content myself with merely giving a list of the species which I can at present recognize. The ill-defined character of some of the genera of existing Antelopes renders it in many instances a matter of extreme difficulty to be quite sure as to the affinities of their fossil relations.

Since describing the skull of Anthracotherium Gresslyi (= Hyopotamus Gresslyi. Rüt.) in the last Number of the Magazine (p. 63), I have observed that the right maxilla of a small anthracotheroid from the Upper Eocene “Bohnerz” of Canton Vaud, Switzerland, has been figured by Pictet in his “Matériaux pour la Paléontologie Suisse—Vertèbres de la Faune Eocéne, Supplement, pl. xxiv. fig. 5,” under the name of H. Gresslyi. The British Museum has recently acquired some upper true molars from the same formation agreeing precisely with those of Pictet's specimen; and a comparison of these teeth with those of the Brit. Museum specimen of A. Gresslyi (figured in my memoir already quoted) shows that they are quite different;— being distinguished by their slightly inferior size, the more inward inclination of the outer surfaces of the external columns, as well as the more distinct loop connecting these columns. These teeth agree, in fact, with those of brachydont species of Hyopotamus, like H. porcinus. Pictet's figure also shows that his specimen differs from Anthracotherium Gresslyi in having an elongated, instead of a triangular Pm. 3.

In the Proceedings of the Geol. Assoc. vol. ix. No. 1, I have given an account of the discovery of two Bone-caves in the Carboniferous rocks on the east side of the Vale of Clwyd, N. Wales, and of the researches carried on in those caverns by Mr. E. Bouverie Luxmoore, of St. Asaph, and myself in the summers of 1883 and 1884. This summer, by the aid of a grant from the Royal Society (the Government Grant), we were enabled to employ a staff of workmen, under our personal supervision, to explore these caverns more thoroughly and with very satisfactory results. Our main object was to gain a clear idea of the physical conditions of the area when the caverns were filled with the deposits, and of the manner in which the remains had been conveyed into them. These points we think we have been able to prove to satisfaction, but it may be advisable to continue the researches for the purpose of obtaining as much confirmatory evidence as possible.

The interesting and important results of the dredgings by the U. S. Steamer Albatross2 between July and September 1884, should not be allowed to pass without notice by geologists.

Since a “shear” is mathematically the same as a compression in one direction with a compensating expansion in a direction atright angles to it, the consideration whether slaty cleavage can be ascribed to movements of this character resolves itself into the question whether the cleaved rocks have or have not suffered a total diminution of bulk. The most convenient way of treating thequestion is by discussing, as I did in my former paper (p. 15), the form of the “ellipsoid of distortion.” The ellipsoid produced by a pure shear would be one of three unequal axes, of which the second or mean axis would be a geometric mean between the other two: whereas, if the expansion did not compensate the compression, the second axis would be greater than this geometric mean, and if the expansion were slight, the second and greatest axes would be nearly equal. The facts seem to accord with the latter supposition, and the diminution of bulk thus indicated agrees with what might be a priori expected.

[Note by the Translator.—M. Albert Gaudry, the well-known Professor of Palæontology at the Museum of Natural History of Paris, following up a report which he published last year of a visit to the British Museum (Natural History), Cromwell Road, has recently written an article in the "Revue Scientifique" on a series of visits just paid to the Museums of Germany and elsewhere.

This article is valuable, not only for the statement of the existence of a great scientific movement on the Continent, but for the summarised sketch it gives of the most interesting geological and palæontological collections in the principal museums of Europe, a knowledge of which is often desiderated by the student when travelling abroad.—Mark Stirrup.]

In an early number of the present serial Prof. Sir R. Owen described and figured the hinder part of the palate of a small mammal from the London Clay of Herne Bay, under the new name of Miolophus planiceps. The specimen is now preserved in the Museum at York, and had been previously described by Mr. E. Charlesworth under the name of Platychœrops Richardsoni; a circumstance which seems to have escaped the notice of Sir R. Owen. This name having the priority should supersede that of Miolophus. The specimen (of which there is a cast in the British Museum) shows the second and third true molars of both sides, and on the right side the fourth premolar and the alveoli of pm 3 and m. 1. Both the later premolars and true molars are of the same general form, and have tritubercular crowns. Sir R. Owen regarded the specimen as indicating a form allied to Hyracotherium (including Pliolophus); but the similarity between the premolars and true molars and the trituberculate crowns of the latter forbids the acceptance of this view

As facts relative to the earliest forms of Molluscs are of interest to the naturalist as well as the geologist, I offer this note on the genus Stenotheca, derived from a study of the remains of several species occurring in the Cambrian rocks of Canada. The formation in which they are found is the St.-John Group, a formation occurring in the Southern part of the Province of New Brunswick; and the geological horizons are those of the Solva and Menevian Groups of Wales, equivalent to the Paradoxides-Tesseni beds, and overlying measures of Étage 1, of the Norwegian geologists. The fossils are, therefore, of great antiquity, having preceded any known Lamellibranchs; and, except the Metoptoma Barrandei of Linnarsson, I know of no Gasteropods of equal antiquity.