In the Geological Magazine for December, 1907, a brief account was given by Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S., of the work of a small committee of Littleborough and Rochdale geologists, who have for several years been engaged in an examination of the Arthropod Beds at Sparth Bottoms, Rochdale. At Sparth Bottoms several beds of greyish-blue shale, containing clay-ironstone nodules, crop out; the nodules have yielded to the hammer a surprisingly large number of new forms of Arthropoda, some of which have already been figured and described, and others still require further investigation. The beds exposed in the quarry are estimated by the author as 135 to 180 feet above the Royley Mine Coal Seam.

Some time ago the Manchester Museum purchased a selection of Coal-measure Fishes from the executors of the late Mr. John Ward, of Longton, and included with these were gutta-percha casts of two species of Arthropods. These were mounted on wooden tablets covered with green paper, one specimen being labelled: “Limulus trilohitoides, Buck. (Bridgewater Treatise, vol. ii, pl. xlvi, fig. 3). Roof of the Upper Bent Mine, Middle Coal-measures, Hunt Lane, near Oldham. Original in the cabinet of E. W. Binny, Esq.” The other: “Limulus rotundatus, Prest. Coal-measures, Oldham.”

Why should the ‘Dragon-tree’ have a name at all? Assuredly one of ‘nomenclatorial permanency’ is impossible for it, for the thing is not a recognizable species. Dr. Knowlton's note on the ‘Dragon-tree’ (ante) is an illustration of the application of the strict laws of nomenclature regardless of common sense. The object of my paper (Geol. Mag., Dec. V, Vol. VIII, pp. 55–9, 1911) was to show that the plant for some time called Benstedtia is not a genus in the true sense of the word at all, as it is merely a bit of the woody trunk of One of the higher Conifers. So much Dr. Knowlton accepts—and then discusses its name in the same fashion as is used for true species.

In an article published in a recent number of this journal, Dr. Henry Woodward discusses the origin of the curious cylindrical cavities which occur in such profusion in certain concretionary blocks of sandstone and on exposed rock-surfaces at two distinct levels in one or two localities in the Fayûm depression. These perforated rocks, first noted by Schweinfurth, were examined by me some ten years ago and referred to as “apparently the work of marine boring mollusca” in my memoir on the region in question. Both Dr. Schweinfurth and I had considerable misgivings in regarding the cavities in question as shellborings, but in my case, and I believe in his also, this explanation appeared to involve fewer difficulties than any other which suggested itself.

As long ago as 1836 Prestwich published his historical paper “On the Geology of Coalbrook Dale”, and in it he figured a Crustacean carapace under the name of Apus dubuis.