In any retrospect of scientific progress there are always special points, ‘golden milestones,’ along the road by which we travel, which mark unusual stages in our journey. Zittel, in his “History of Geology and Palæontology,” fixes the ‘heroic period’ from 1790 to 1820, when the great masters of our science, Werner, Pallas, Saussure, Huttoti, Playfair, William Smith, Leopold von Buch, Alexander von Humboldt, Alex. Brongniart, and Cuvier arose and laid the foundations of Geology.

In the district of Tullstorp in Scania (Southern Sweden) the white ‘Writing Chalk’ is dug rather extensively, and in exploring the ground numerous borings have lately been made which have shown that this Chalk is not actually in place as supposed by Angelin, B. Lundgren, J. Jönsson, J. C. Moberg, W. Dames, and others, but occurs only in extraordinarily large transported masses or boulders (Schollen), up to 850 metres long, 300 metres broad, and 15 metres thick, which are embedded in the glacial deposits.

As is well known, all pterodactyls have three small, unguiculate fingers on the radial side of the patagial finger, evidently used in the support of the body, possibly also in prehension and ambulation. In the older forms these fingers were relatively much better developed than in the later ones, the metacarpals of the former, of considerable strength, all articulating with the carpus, whereas in the more specialized forms of later geological age the proximal ends of these bones had become either greatly attenuated or entirely lost. In Nyctosaurus, for instance, the very small anterior metacarpals were not more than one-eighth of the length of the wing-metacarpal, and were in life loosely attached by the soft parts only to the distal part of that bone.

In 1851 Captain (now Sir) Richard Strachey communicated to the Geological Society of London a paper ”On the Geology of Part of the Himalaya Mountains and Tibet,” based upon the observations which he had made during the years 1848 and 1849. The Palæozoic and Secondary fossils therein mentioned were described in 1865 by J. W. Salter and H. F. Blanford respectively in a work of which the title-page reads as follows: “Palæontology of Niti in the Northern Himalaya: being descriptions and figures of the Palæozoic and Secondary Fossils collected by Colonel Richard Strachey, R.E. Descriptions by J. W. Salter, F.G.S., A.L.S., and H. F. Blanford, A.R.S.M., F.G.S. Reprinted with slight corrections for private circulation from Colonel Strachey's forthcoming work on the Physical Geography of the Northern Himalaya. Calcutta: O. T. Cutter, Military Orphan Press. March, 1865.”

The fine cliff of Stevn's Klint on the Danish coast is seldom mentioned in English geological writings. As it presents a clean section several miles long of the uppermost Danish Chalk, and is easily visited in a day's excursion from Copenhagen, a short sketch may have some interest for readers of this Magazine. It has none of the astonishing scenery displayed by the coasts of Möen and Rügen; the land is level and bare, the cliff is not broken and not wooded: yet it possesses a prettiness of its own.