When I visited the town of Burghersdorp, Cape Colony, with the aid of a grant from the Percy Sladen Trustees, I was given by Mr. Maasdorp, the district surveyor, some fossil bones which he had collected at a locality on the farm Witkop, District Albert. Subsequently, through the kindness of D. V. Kannemeyer, Esq., its owner, I had the opportunity of examining the spot and obtained remains of Theropodous Dermosaurs, showing, as was already perfectly clear from its stratigraphical relations, that the locality lay in the ‘Red Beds’ of the Stormberg Series far above the Cynognathus beds of Burghersdorp, which have yielded so many Cynodont remains.

The name of Geikie has become as familar to present-day geologists as those of Murchison, of Sedgwick, or of Lyell were to our immediate prodecessors.

Notices and portraits of his elder brother, Sir Arehibald Geikie, K.C.B., the President of the Royal Society, have already appeared in the Geological Magazine (see Vol. for 1890, Pl. II, pp. 49–51, and 1907, Pl. I, pp. 1–2); it is high time to present that of the younger brother, Professor James Geikie, who occupies the leading place in our science and in geography in Edinburgh and itys University, and is known every where also by his published works, especially by his contributions to Glacial Geology.

To write an adequate notice of Professor Eduard Suess' work would be to review the progress of Geology during nearly half a century, for in all that time he was actively engaged in helping to explain the great problems connected with the formation of the features of the Earth's surface, and to trace accurately the principles upon which these have been brought about.

It may interest our readers if we remind them that with the publication of our July Number the Geological Magazine enters upon the fiftieth year of its existence. The first number was issued in July, 1864, and the first volume consisted of six numbers for the half-year. Consequently the commencement of the fiftieth Volume took place in January of the present year. It must be a matter for congratulation to the Editor that during so extended a period he has personally edited every number, excepting three, when he took a long vacation in Italy and could not conveniently deal with proofs. Such a record is probably unique. It is moreover satisfactory to learn that there has at no time been a serious lack of useful material wherewith to fill the pages of the Magazine. In our copy of Vol. I there are lists of Local and Foreign Correspondents; among the former is the name of the Rev. H. H. Winwood, and among the latter are the names of Baron Adolph. von Koenen and Dr. Anton Fritsch. Amongst surviving contributors to the 1864 volume may be recorded the Rev. Osmond Fisher, Sir Archibald Geikie, Professor Edward Hull, Sir E. Ray Lankester, and Henry Woodward.

Three years ago when I was discussing certain Carboniferous Corals from Arctic regions the opinion was expressed that the genus Lophophyllum of Milne-Edwards & Haime had been erroneously interpreted by palæontologists, and that in reality it included Thomson and Nicholson's well-known genus Koninckophyllum The main object of the present communication is to substantiate this view with illustrative sections from topotypes, accompanied by some further observations on the genus. At the same time the opportunity is taken to deal with several points in the morphology of the similar genus Cyathaxonia; in the latter case the work is in the nature of a preliminary note rather than of a formal revision. Pending the appearance of a general memoir on the British Carboniferous Corals, it seems desirable that these notes should be published without further delay, as all these genera are commonly met with in zonal work. Most of the material has come either from the Geological Survey Collection or is in my own possession, but Dr. Vaughan has always been very helpful, while I have to thank Dr. T. F. Sibly for some unusually fine examples of Cyathaxonia from Matlock. Other specimens of this genus, from Yorkshire, have very kindly been sent to me from time to time by Dr. A. Wilmore, often at some personal inconvenience.

Introduction.—The conditions described below were observed over a large part of South-West Texas; but the local details apply to an area of one or two hundred square miles in McMullen County, geologically surveyed by the writer in 1912. The centre of observations was a little mining ranch named Crowther, about 50 miles south of San Antonio and 80 miles from the Gulf of Mexico, near the inland limit of the Gulf coastal plain. The country for many miles around Crowther is practically untouched by man, though a somewhat primitive little local railroad now under reconstruction reaches to within 16 miles of it.

Most collections of fossil plants include specimens of tree-trunks or branches in which the bark is preserved in great perfection, while no trace of the structure of the trunk within the bark remains. Striking examples of this type of fossilization, in which the bark is preserved in exquisite detail while the space within the bark is wholly filled with fine siliceous sediments showing no trace of the original plant structure, occur frequently among the various species of Sigillaria and Lepidodendron. The fossilized armour-like outer cortex of Lepidodendron fails to retain any remnant of the inner woody material about as often as the various molluscan species of Spirifer fail to preserve their delicate internal spires. We know from the silicified specimens which have been found that the greater part of the trunk in Lepidodendron is occupied by a soft middle cortex which is very readily disposed of by micro-organisms. The relatively small cylinder of secondary wood which is found in most species which have attained to a large growth was itself rather susceptible to decay, the tracheids being relatively thin-walled, with the medullary cells very large and the rays voluminous. Innumerable examples of the entire failure of the woody tissue of these Lycopods to survive the processes which left the outer cortex admirably preserved occur in the fine-grained sandstones of Pottsville age in Orange County, Indiana.

So long ago as 1897 Baron Franz recorded the discovery of numerous bones of Dinosaurs and Chelonians in fresh water deposits of Upper Cretaceous age at Szentpeterfalva in Transsylvania. Since that time he has made extensive collections of bones from the same locality and has published various papers concerning them. In his last collection, now in the British Museum (Natural History), there occur some fragments of limb-bones which he does not consider to be reptilian but rather of avian origin. These specimens he has kindly submitted to me for determination and description, and they form the subject of the present paper.

In a communication to the International Medical Congress recently reported in some of the English newspapers, Professor Arthur Keith expressed complete disapproval of my reconstruction of the skull and mandible of Eoanthropus Dawsoni. I concluded that the brain capacity of this skull was comparable only with that of some of the lowest existing savages, while the mandible must have been provided in front with teeth of the ape pattern. Professor Keith, on the other hand, has restored the skull in such a manner as to have a brain capacity of 1,500 cubic centimetres, thus exceeding that of the average modern European. By distorting the curve of the front of the mandible he has also furnished it with completely human teeth. These two views, therefore, need careful examination before any definite conclusions can be drawn from this remarkable fossil.

Several nearly complete skeletons of the primitive teleostean fish Portheus molossus are now known from the Chalk of Kansas; but none is better preserved than a remarkable trunk, nearly 12 feet in total length, lately obtained for the British Museum by Mr. Charles H. Sternberg. The specimen is shown, of about of the natural size, in the accompanying Plate XVIII, where it is seen mounted with the head of another fish of the same proportions. All the bones remain embedded in the matrix exactly as they were found, and there is no restoration beyond slight repairs.

1. The reply by the Rev. O. Fisher (Geological Magazine, June, 1913, p. 250) to Sir Thomas Holland's note leads me to ask permission to place the geodetic case before your geological readers. I ask geologists to give a hearing to a geodetic computer.

A year spent amongst the high mountain ranges of the Yunnan–Tibet frontier, where the Salween, Mekong, and Yangtze Rivers have been pinched together till they now flow parallel to one another for 200 miles in a belt of mountainous country averaging about 75 miles in width, enabled me, while prosecuting my botanical exploration, to ascertain a few facts of geological interest which form the subject of the present paper (see Plates V and VI and Figs. 1–4). The Tibetans of Kham, with more eye for the picturesque than one would have given them credit for, have, with amazing intuition, appreciated the subtle distinction between a land of high mountains and a land of deep valleys, and in their classical writings refer to Tibet under the name of Nam-grog-chi, which, according to Mr J. H. Edgar, may be translated “the land of deep corrosions”; and this it undoubtedly is.

Some years since Professor E. J. Garwood sent to me for examination some pieces of limestone from the Lower Carboniferous rocks in the Shap and Ravenstonedale districts of Westmorland, in which he had observed the rounded outlines of fossils with a structure which appeared to him to resemble that of Stromatopora. The rock in which the fossils were embedded was so compact and hard that they could not be extracted, and it was necessary to make sections in various directions in order to ascertain their structure, which proved to be identical with that of Solenopora, now well known as one of the calcareous Algæ. It is many years ago since this genus was recognized in the Ordovician rocks in North America, Britain, and Eussia; more recently it was found in the Silurian rocks of the Isle of Gotland, and in 1894 a species was described from the Jurassic rocks of Gloucestershire and Yorkshire. But until this fortunate discovery of its occurrence in the Lower Carboniferous by Professor Garwood, no example of the genus was known in any of the rocks between the Silurian and the Jurassic.

Micropholis Stowi was described by Huxley in 1859 from a small and very incompletely preserved skull found by G. W. Stow at Rhenosterberg (north-west of New Bethesda), District Graaf Reinet, Cape Colony. Subsequently R. Owen described another specimen as Petrophryne granulata. In his description he suggested that it might prove to be identical with Huxley's type. The British Museum now contains these two type-specimens and three other examples of the form, all except Huxley's type being from the Procolophon zone of Donnybrook, Upper Zwartkei, District Queenstown.

In the Geological Magazine for July and August last Mr. A. J. Jukes-Browne made a proposal for the recognition in England, France, and Germany of a boundary-line between two corresponding stages in the middle of the old zone of Actinocamax quadratus. The reception to be given to this proposal so far as it concerns France and Germany must be a matter for the geologists of those countries, and I am concerning myself chiefly with the proposal as it affects the English Chalk. Inasmuch as I sympathize with the proposal, and my own work is partly relied upon, it may seem ungracious in me to criticize it, but there are several points on which criticism seems desirable if only to afford Mr. Jukes-Browne an opportunity of replying while the subject is still fresh.

Stems of Ecquisetites columnaris (Brong.) have long been known to occur in a vertical position in the sandstones of the Inferior Oolite on the Yorkshire coast. This mode of occurrence has commonly been held as proving that the stems are preserved in the position in which they once grew, having been buried in situ beneath the layers of sand that accumulated on the spot. On the other hand, it has been argued that the upright position need not be primary; it might be as readily explained if the stems are regarded as drifted and secondarily deposited on the spots where they are now found. It is well known and has been pointed out, particularly in the discussions of the upright stems in the Coal-measures, that a drifting tree often has a tendency to sink in a vertical position, the root-end being heavier because of adhering mineral matter or from some other reason. Phillips describes, in his Geology of the Yorkshire Coast, a locality at High Whitby where upright stems of Equisetites columnaris occur in the sandstone. He continues: “They … are broken off or imperfect above, and seldom reach to the upper surface of the bed; they are also broken off below, but commonly pass to the lower surface; and some of the lower joints nearest the roots are found in the subjacent bed of shale.”

At the Stockholm meeting of the Congress in 1910 an invitation to hold the twelfth meeting in Canada was accepted. As the Congress met in the United States in 1891 and in Mexico in 1906, members were thus afforded an opportunity of visiting all the great divisions of North America. The Canadian meeting was held at Toronto from August 7 to 14, 1913, under the presidency of Professor F. D. Adams, of McGill University. About 600 members attended it, although the total enrolled was nearly twice as great, and 46 countries were represented among the members. The Congress was formally opened by the Right Hon. Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, on behalf of H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, the Honorary President, who was unavoidably absent, and speeches of welcome were made by others. Dr. R. W. Brock, Director of the Geological Survey of Canada and General Secretary of the Congress, presented to the Congress a monograph entitled “The Coal Resources of the World”, the result of an inquiry made upon the initiative of the Executive Committee of the Twelfth Congress, with the assistance of Geological Surveys and mining geologists of different countries. It consists of three quarto volumes of about 400 pages each (11 by 8 1¼4 inches) and an atlas of 66 pages of maps in colours (13 1¼2 by 191¼2 inches) published by Morang & Co., of Toronto, at $25 per set, net.

Avicularia of what I have called the Lesueuri-type are not confined to Membranipora. There are at least two species provided with them which come nearer to Semieschara.