The Twenty-third volume of the Palæontographical Society's published Monographs has just reached us. It represents the annual volume for 1869; so that, thanks to the energetic exertions of the Honorary Secretary, the Rev. T. Wiltshire, M.A., F.G.S., we have now ten months during which the volume for 1870 may appear, thus bringing the date of issue once more even with the current year's subscription.

I Have been gratified by observing of late the appearance among geologists of a more general appreciation of the study of volcanic phenomena,—using that word in its broadest sense, as comprehending not merely the occasional outbursts of vapour, ashes, and lava, but also the action of those subterranean forces, to which alone we are indebted for the existence, now or in former times, of any dry land whatever above the dead sea-level at which the agents of denudation would otherwise maintain the surface of the globe.

In Professor Harkness's very interesting paper “On the Middle Pleistocene Deposits,” he alludes to the beds described by Mr. George Maw, “in the valley of the Severn, between Bridgenorth and Shrewsbury, which seem to accord with the shell-bearing beds of Ireland”

At a meeting of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, December, 1867, a paper was, read by Mr. E. W. Binney, “On the Age of the Haematite Iron Deposits of Furness,” when he exhibited and described some iron-ore fossils brought by me from the Water Blain mines, west of the Duddon.

My friend and colleague, Mr. H. B. Medlicott, published, in the August (1869) number of the GeologicalMagazine, a paper “On Faults in Strata,” in which he endeavoured to show that the evidence usually accepted for faults, in the true geological acceptation of the term, is insufficient; that a large number of the lines of junction between rocks of dissimilar age, usually mapped by the Survey of Great Britain and other Surveys as “faults,” are, in truth, natural junctions, due to deposition against cliffs or other steep surfaces; and that direct evidence of friction is necessary to establish the existence of a fault. The latter is rather left to be inferred than positively asserted; nevertheless it is very clearly intimated that it is the writer's opinion.

The acute observation of the late Professor J Beete Jukes, combined J with his power of reasoning from Nature, and by Nature's laws, enabled him at once to be capable of explaining the relations of complicated strata, over which others might puzzle for months: neither was he unwilling to. impart his knowledge to others, for nothing seemed to give him greater pleasure than teaching and explaining away difficulties, by pointing out the similarity between the former and present agents at work fashioning the surface of our earth.

The Extensive Excavations For Sewerage purposes, which have been X going on for nearly two years, have brought to light several peculiarities in the relative water-bearing properties of the various strata in the neighbourhood of Norwich.

The total thickness of Millstone Grit in North Wales does not quite reach 300ft. This thickness is, I am aware, considerably below that given by several authors, who notice this formation incidentally; but I am prepared to say, from. actual and computed measurement, made on the spot, that the above figures are substantially correct. The Carboniferous system, from the base of the Mountain Limestone to that of the Coal Measures in North Wales, is but an epitome of the same beds in the North of England, the middle member, the grits and sandstones, being thin in proportion.