Since writing the letter quoted in the foregoing communication by my friend Prof. Liversidge, I have had the opportunity of examining a larger fragment of the calcareous rock to which it refers, and am thereby enabled to add somewhat, not merely to the list of Foraminifera which it contains, but also to the general conclusions to be drawn from it. The lithological characters of the rock are, as Prof. Liversidge has stated, precisely those of many specimens of white chalk, but it is seldom that a Cretaceous mineral is so entirely composed of the recognizable remains of microzoa, and it is still more rarely that a geological deposit occurs, for which so exact a counterpart in process of formation can be indicated. Under these circumstances some further remarks on the subject may not be without interest.

Recent excavations for buildings on the east side of Nottingham have afforded opportunities for observing the true character and development of the conglomerate at the base of the Lower Keuper, which did not exist when this district was visited by the Government Geological Survey. The fact that no fair equivalent of the Muschelkalk of Germany has been met with in England lends an interest to the beds at the junction of the Lower Keuper and the Upper Bunter which they would probably not otherwise possess. Thus the Geological Survey paid special attention to the scanty exposures of this junction that happened to exist twenty years ago in this part. The best section to be seen at that time, near Nottingham, was in a lane leading from the Mansfield turnpike road, a mile north of the town, to the Mapperley Hills, and is thus described by Mr. Aveline in his memoir on the Nottingham district (Sheet 71, N.E.):—“Near the bottom of the lane there are beds of coarse sandstone [Upper Bunter] slightly consolidated, with pebbles of various coloured quartz, quartz-rock, and other sandstones. There is no good bedding visible in this conglomerate, and lying on it there are thin and regularly-bedded fine sandstones of a red colour. This is the bottom of the Lower Keuper beds, and the line between the two formations is well marked, there being an apparent unconformity. There is about twelve feet of this red sandstone, and above it three to four feet of soft red loam, then a thin bed of coarse light sandstone, above this a bed of sand and marl, with some small pebbles of quartz, then alternations of dark and light-brown soft sandstone of various thickness, and red marly shale, which pass up into the Upper Keuper red marly shale with thin beds of white sandstone.”

When we speak of Newfoundland, we speak of England's oldest and yet almost unknown Colony. When we look at its rocks, we shall find that they also are old, and from the metamorphisms and contortions they have suffered are almost unrecognizable. The first geologist who journeyed round the rugged shores which gird the island, and across the marshes and thickets which cover its interior, was the indefatigable Jukes.

Of all geological questions, perhaps that of the Antiquity of Man is the most popular. Nor is it one on which geologists have been rash or hasty in advancing new ideas; quite the reverse: they have lagged behind the evidence. In the “Principles of Geology,” one of the most instructive chapters is that in which the author treats of the progress of Geology. Therein Sir Charles Lyell has shown how the science had been retarded for three hundred years by men's reluctance to admit such a simple and obvious matter as the marine origin of stratified rocks, owing to a fixed idea that the world had come into being a short time since in much the same state as it appears to-day. Yet the illustrious author of the “Principles of Geology” let pass for thirty years the evidence that Man was contemporaneous with the extinct Pleistocene mammalia.

If it be an established rule, in coal-mining districts, that the hade of a fault is to the downthrow, it is an equally undeniable fact, that the surfaces of bedded slates, as a rule, exhibit only faults which hade to the upthrow. In suggesting a possible explanation of this phenomenon, I shall allude to the latter as reversed, and the former as direct faults.

Of this remarkable genus several species from the Lower Silurian rocks of Russia have been well described and illustrated by Eichwald, Pander, de Verneuil, Kutorga, and others, to whose works and papers the reader is referred.

The specimen referred to in the following note is I believe the first example of a Macrourous Crustacean from the Carboniferous of Nova Scotia; and it is interesting to find, as pointed out to me by Mr. Woodward, that its affinities are so close with the long known Palœocarabus dubius of Prestwich, and Anthra-palœmon of Salter, from the English and Scottish Coal-measures. It was found by Mr. Albert G. Hill, manager of the Cumberland Coal-mine, at the South Joggins in Nova Scotia, in one of the bands of black bituminous limestone which occur in the middle part of the Coal Formation.

The publication in the last Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of the most instructive paper by Messrs. S. V. Wood, jun., and F. W. Harmer, on the Later Tertiary Geology of East Anglia, and one by the latter author on the Kessingland Cliff-section, induces me to offer the following remarks, with the hope that my views may be considered by geologists who have made this question their study.

Considerable uncertainty has for some time existed with regard to the formations known by the names of Upper Greensand and Chloritic Marl.

For some years past, the serious attention of several eminent malacologists has been directed to the endeavour to determine the affinities of the Brachiopoda, or the exact position the group should occupy in the animal kingdom. The Invertebrata have been grouped into five sub-kingdoms, namely, the Frotozoa, Cœlenterata, Annuloida, Annulosa, and Mollusca, and for many years the Brachiopoda have been considered to constitute a separate class in the subkingdom Mollusca, a view still maintained by some distinguished naturalists.

The well-known genus Trochammina was instituted in 1859 by Messrs. Parker and Jones as a sub-genus for the reception of an arenaceous foraminifer, the Rotalia (Nautilus) inflata of Montagu.

The Ironstone Beds of Oolitic age in Lincolnshire have, during the last four years, yielded not only large quantities of brown hæmatite iron-ore, but some very interesting sections and borings, comprising thirty-one of the latter between four and seven miles to the south of Lincoln, and several extensive openings showing that the beds are much richer at this distance from Lincoln, but that they become very siliceous and pass into a ferruginous sand above Normanton about eighteen miles to the south.

By the permission of the Director-General of the Geological Survey I am enabled to publish a short account of the results arrived at during a detailed examination of the cliffs between Weybourn and Mundesley on the coast of Norfolk.

Numerous buried channels filled with drift occur over Ohio and the neighbouring states forming the St. Lawrence basin. Some of these penetrate the water-parting, and formed, according to Prof. Newberry, waste weirs through which the lake waters of the St. Lawrence basin escaped into the valley of the Mississippi, as the land rose and the sea retired from that valley.

In a paper read on February 23rd, 1876, before the Geological Society of London, I endeavoured to prove that the peculiar laminated or fissile structure, common in certain igneous rocks, was due to contraction, like the associated ordinary joint-structures. In the discussion which followed, an objection was made to my having quoted certain phonolites from Auvergne, in support of my theory, because it was well known that the fissile structure in the typical phonolites of Hungary was due to change in mineral composition, and so the result of a banded structure in the rock. That this was not the case with those Auvergne phonolites, I had already convinced myself by examination, both in the field and with the microscope, and I had nowhere asserted that the only way in which rocks could become fissile was by the particular cause which I had advanced; for, although I only knew the Hungary rocks from hand-specimens, I was aware of a somewhat similar structure in certain British rocks. I thought I remembered also one or two cases in these where the fissile and the banded structure were co-existent and independent, but as the criticism came from a quarter not to be neglected, I determined to re-examine these cases. This I have done on occasion of short visits to Arran in the past and present year, during which I have obtained materials which will, I think, further illustrate this, and throw some light on other rock structures. The points, then, upon which I shall touch in the present paper are the relation (I.) of fissile and banded structures; (II.) of banded, spherulitic, and perlitic structures.

On first thoughts, it may seems that the lowest group of vertebrates, of all the divisions comprised in the animal kingdom, might be most easily described, and its zoological limits defined; but, on examination, the fishes prove to be most curiously linked to the invertebrata below and the amphibian reptiles above. In fact, it is not easy to draw the lines positively between them, and to say where the true vertebrates begin, or where the piscine characters are merged in the reptilian. It is proposed to refer to some of the most aberrant forms of living fish and their fossil affinities; then, briefly passing in review the distribution of the various families in geological time, to see how far descent with modification is traceable in this class of vertebrates.

I have been fortunate enough to obtain from the eastern slope of Mount Hermon (Jebel esh Shech) a large lot of fossils, which not only determine the geological position of that part of the Lebanon, but also settle the question of the existence of Jurassic formations in Syria. Of course it has been often enough asserted that Jurassic rocks are found here, but the fact has not been considered settled beyond doubt.

About half-way between Hayburn Wyke and Cloughton Wyke, and five miles North of Scarborough, a scar of hard sandstone, remarkable for its even bedding, may be seen rising with a considerable dip from the sea. This sandstone contains along its bedding planes occasional thin layers of a very dense ironstone, from which it has probably received the name of ”Iron Scar.“ Immediately beneath are about five feet of shales closely resembling those of the Middle Lias, and containing two bands of dogger ironstone.

In a recent visit to the Isle of Man, I spent three long days in examining the deposits of the very interesting district in the south of the island, and I wish to draw the attention of your readers to some facts which are, I think, important. Not being an experienced geologist, I hope I shall do so with becoming modesty, and I should feel very gratified if some more practised geologist would verify my statements, which are, however, not rashly made, as I have sifted the question with care and patience.