Some ten years ago Mr. Alfred Gillett observed in a quarry of the Lower Lias near his residence at Overleigh, Street, Somerset, a number of broken slabs of shaly limestone, containing portions of the skeleton of an Ichthyosaur. These slabs, which had been cast aside by the workmen, were fitted together by Mr. Gillett, who finally succeeded, after the expenditure of great pains, in skilfully developing from them an almost entire example of the skeleton of Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris, Conybeare.

In a recent excursion the Liverpool Geological Society visited Norber Brow, near Austwick, to inspect the celebrated perched blocks of Silurian rock lying upon the Carboniferous limestone plateau. The visit was made in very appropriate weather during a storm of hail which added a weird element to the scene and heightened by contrast the blackness of the Silurian blocks. Since returning home I have re-read Prof. McKenny Hughes' interesting paper on the subject, and find that generally speaking my notes and measurements are in accord with his. The angularity of the perched blocks, so different to the rounded and striated erratics of the Boulder Clay Plains of Lancashire and Cheshire, and the absence of Boulder Clay, is very striking, and inevitably suggests their transportal by glacier ice probably at the last phase of the glacial period.

It has long been known that certain deposits of Lower Cretaceous age lay between the Gault and the Purbeck group in the Vale of Wardour, but the absence of any good open sections, along the tracts where they reach the surface, has hitherto prevented geologists from ascertaining the exact nature and succession of the beds.

Dr. Fitton, whose account of the Vale of Wardour is wonderfully good and accurate, distinctly recognized the existence both of Wealden and Vectian (Lower Greensand), stating that certain sands, containing traces of marine shells, occurred beneath the Gault and above the clays which he regarded as Wealden.

In the last Number of the Geological Magazine my friend Mr. W. T. Blanford takes exception in very courteous terms to the views I have maintained in regard to the recent elevation of the Highlands of Eastern Asia. I cannot, however, quite grasp how far he agrees or disagrees with me. He does not apparently question the evidence which has so impressed experienced observers like Humboldt, Murchison, Tschihatcheff, Cotta, and Senkofski in regard to the absence of traces of widespread glacial phenomena in the high mountains of the Ural, the Altai, and the Thian Shan ranges, and which apart from all considerations seems to me inexplicable on any other theory than that these mountains did not exist during the so-called Glacial Period.

In the originally epistolary form of my previous communication on this subject brevity was aimed at as far as possible. It was written at the time the letters therein referred to appeared, and my object in throwing out such suggestions as I have ventured to make, was to call the attention of writers on petrological subjects to the desirability of avoiding a certain looseness of thought, which seemed to attach itself not infrequently to the terms ‘chemical change’ and ‘chemical action.’

In the June Number of the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, p. 259, Major-General MacMahon deals with my paper on fireclays, etc., and raises, with much fairness, several objections to some of my interpretations and inferences. Some of the criticisms are exactly what I should expect to be made, and were more or less present in my own mind, so that I can well see how they may arise in the minds of others.

General MacMahon appears to have somewhat overstated my views as to the “dynamic” part of the “Metamorphism” in question, owing to taking all I say as equally applying to slates and clays, which is not the case. Thus, the paragraphs he refers to on p. 168 will, I think, plainly show that I distinguish between what has taken place in clays and allied shales, and what has taken place in slates; and passages in my previous paper make this still more evident.

Time of occurrence, 22h. 36 m.: Intensity, VI. Epicentrum about two miles N.N.E. of Bolton, half a mile west of the village of Bradshaw.

This interesting earthquake affected a district for the most part thickly populated, and the accounts of it are consequently numerous. In the newspapers mentioned below, records are given of observations from 156 towns and villages, situated within a nearly circular area about 55 miles in diameter. Considering the smallness of this area, I suppose that but few previous earthquakes have afforded materials so abundant for the seismologist.