A Small picrite sill of critical significance is examined in detail, from top to bottom, with particular reference to the distribution and crystallization of the olivine. Statistical evaluation of the sizes of olivine crystals establishes a gradation from large phenocrysts to small groundmass crystals. The micrometric data indicate that, while the feldspar content has remained constant, there is an inverse relationship between the distribution of olivine and pyroxene. This relationship, viewed in conjunction with the common tendency toward skeletal crystallization of the olivine and its gradation in size, amounts to substantial evidence that much of the olivine rapidly crystallized at the time when the sill was emplaced. At a few places, the sandstones and grits, into which the sill has been intruded, have been fused. Where it has penetrated a dolerite dyke along its direction of strike, a non-porphyritic facies, with very much less olivine, is associated with xenoliths of peridotite and of fused sandstone. It is inferred, from the field relationships, that this non-porphyritic facies was intruded as a liquid, containing xenoliths, in advance of the picrite. The chemical composition of this liquid is more calcic than basalt. It is concluded that this earlier calcic liquid was followed by a later magnesian (picritic) liquid and that these liquids have probably a deep-seated genetic relationship with feldspathic peridotite. Further research must be directed toward investigating this relationship both experimentally and in picrite—peridotite rock associations.

Stable isotope data from the East Kirkton succession are used to elucidate the extent of hot-spring influence in the palaeoenvironment by constraining conditions of deposition of the silica and the formation of sulphides.

Petrographically silica occurs as chert laminae thought to be primary, and as patchy chert considered as replacive. No evidence for biogenic silica was observed. For 20 silica samples δ18O was measured for structural oxygen and δD for bound water. δ18O(SMOW) varied between +21 and +27‰ with no sample groupings related to petrography. The range in δD(SMOW) was from −50 to −90‰ with lower values characterising replacive or altered silica; water contents of both petrographic groups were similar. A plot of δ18O versus δD for the laminated primary silica defines a grouping about the line defined by Scottish agates (Fallick et al. 1985). This suggests for the unaltered silica a formation temperature of about 60°C and a fluid containing a strong component of meteoric water. The data imply a Lower Carboniferous meteoric water δ18O composition of −3‰ and δD of −15‰, consistent with the known palaeolatitude.

The only sulphide observed was pyrite; 34 samples were selected from a wide variety of lithological and textural occurrences. δ34S(CDT) ranges widely and continuously between +8 and −34‰ with no strong mode. The sulphur appears to be derived from several sources, and pyrite formation from a variety of conditions as indicated by such wide ranging data, but for the samples with the lowest δ34S the involvement of bacteria in sulphate reduction is inferred.

39. In the first part of this paper, read to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in April 1862, and published in their Transactions, I explained the principles of a method devised by me in 1850 for ascertaining the absolute conducting power of substances capable of being formed into long bars; and I also stated the general results of experiments made in 1851 on the Conductivity for heat of wrought Iron.

40. I explained in Art. 14 of that paper, that the publication of the results had been for ten years withheld, partly in consequence of the state of my health which completely interrupted the experiments, but still more from the defective graduation of some of the thermometers used, which made it necessary to submit the instruments to a careful scrutiny, and to repeat with the duly corrected numbers the whole of the elaborate projections of the curves and calculations from them, on which the accuracy of the final results of course depends.

In their account of the Orlock Bridge Fault of Northern Ireland and its presumed continuation into the Scottish Southern Uplands (the Kingledores Fault) Anderson and Oliver (1986) provide welcome detail in support of major strike-slip movement. However, their identification of the Kingledores Fault as a line of massive strike-slip movement is based on a number of assumptions which are permissible only because biostratigraphical control is generally sparse. In particular the assertion that the Kingledores Fault is a “giant step in the diachronous southerly ascent of the turbidite base” is founded largely on a misinterpretation of evidence recorded by Peach and Horne (1899), Griffith and Wilson (1982) and others.

During the cruise of H.M.S. “ Triton ” a small but very interesting collection of Pycnogonids was made. Mr John Mueray sent it over to me, and asked me to prepare a report on it, which I gladly undertook to do.

It has been long known that in various parts of Africa, the natives are in the habit of subjecting to the ordeal of poison parties who are suspected of crimes. On the east coast, we meet with Tanghinia venenata, yielding the Tanghin poison-nut of Madagascar; and on the west coast, seeds and barks of different kinds have been employed as ordeals,—the sources of which, however, have not been hitherto fully ascertained.

Dr Kirk, naturalist to the Livingstone Expedition, states, that the Manganja tribe, in the south-east of Africa, believe in a God, and in medicine, or the ordeal which he directs as the means of discovering crime. If the ordeal causes vomiting, it shows innocence; if it acts by the bowels, crime, and the person is put to death. But the doctors have a good knowledge of which to give, for there are different plants used.

The fin-to-limb transition is heralded as one of the most important events in vertebrate evolution. Over the last few decades our understanding of how limbs evolved has significantly increased; but, hypotheses for why limbs evolved are still rather open. Fishes that engage their fins to ‘walk' along substrate may provide some perspective. The charismatic frogfishes are often considered to have the most limb-like fins, yet we still know little about their underlying structure. Here we reconstruct the pectoral fin musculoskeletal anatomy of the scarlet frogfish to identify adaptations that support fin-assisted walking behaviours. The data are compared to three additional anglerfish species: the oval batfish, which represents an independent acquisition of fin-assisted walking; and two pelagic deep-sea swimmers, the triplewart seadevil and ghostly seadevil. Our results clearly show broad musculoskeletal differences between the pectoral fins of swimming and walking anglerfish species. The frogfish and batfish have longer and more robust fins; larger, differentiated muscles; and better developed joints, including a reverse ball-and-socket glenoid joint and mobile ‘wrist'. Further, the frogfish and batfish show finer-scale musculoskeletal differences that align with their specific locomotor ecologies. Within, we discuss the functional significance of these anatomical features in relation to walking, the recurring evolution of similar adaptations in other substrate locomoting fishes, as well as the selective pressures that may underlie the evolution of limbs.

Specimen-level phylogenetic approaches are widely used in molecular biology for taxonomic and systematic purposes. However, they have been largely ignored in analyses based on morphological traits, where phylogeneticists mostly resort to species-level analyses. Recently, a number of specimen-level studies have been published in vertebrate palaeontology. These studies indicate that specimen-level phylogeny may be a very useful tool for systematic reassessments at low taxonomic levels. Herein, we review the challenges when working with individual organisms as operational taxonomic units in a palaeontological context, and propose guidelines of how best to perform a specimen-level phylogenetic analysis using the maximum parsimony criterion. Given that no single methodology appears to be perfectly suited to resolve relationships among individuals, and that different taxa probably require different approaches to assess their systematics, we advocate the use of a number of methodologies. In particular, we recommend the inclusion of as many specimens and characters as feasible, and the analysis of relationships using an extended implied weighting approach with different downweighting functions. Resulting polytomies should be explored using a posteriori pruning of unstable specimens, and conflicting tree topologies between different iterations of the analysis should be evaluated by a combination of support values such as jackknifing and symmetric resampling. Species delimitation should be consistent among the ingroup and based on a reproducible approach. Although time-consuming and methodologically challenging, specimen-level phylogenetic analysis is a highly useful tool to assess intraspecific variability and provide the basis for a more informed and accurate creation of species-level operational taxonomic units in large-scale systematic studies. It also has the potential to inform us about past speciation processes, morphological trait evolution, and their potential intrinsic and extrinsic drivers in pre-eminent detail.

The most serious gap in our knowledge of the anatomy of the British Actiniaria has been the almost complete absence of structural data referring to the genus Phellia. The present paper deals with all the British species belonging to this genus, and adds some notes on other forms.

I wish to make the following acknowledgments. I have received a grant from the Royal Society, which has rendered possible the work described. I am indebted to my wife for preparing serial sections of the species of Phellia, and for drawing text-figs. 2, 3, 5, and 8. I also wish to thank Miss E. M. Stephenson for text-figs. 1, 9, and 10. Text-figs. 1, 6, 7, 11, and 12 have been reproduced before in my Ray Society Monograph on the British Sea Anemones (and text-fig. 12 in the Journal of the Marine Biological Association also), but their repetition here is essential for the demonstration of the several points which they illustrate.

In this paper I give an account of observations made during a visit in 1879 to the Færöe Islands in company with my friend Mr Amund Helland of Christiania. The principal object of our journey was to examine the glacial phenomena of the islands, but we studied so far as we could the various rockmasses of which the group is composed, and constructed a geological sketchmap to show the line of outcrop of coal, the disposition of the strata, the direction of dykes, and the trend of the glaciation. I have only to add, that all the observations recorded in the following pages were made in concert with my friend, and I am glad to say that we were quite at one in our general conclusions.

Concerning the affinities and systematic position of this very remarkable Devonian fish, there has hitherto prevailed very great uncertainty. The two original specimens, discovered by Mr C. W. Peach, in the Old Red Sandstone of John O’Groat’s, Caithness, and described by Sir Philip Egerton, left us in complete ignorance as to the osteology of the head and the dentition, while the evidence they afforded as to the structure of the pectoral fins was by no means so clear as might have been wished for. To quote from Sir Philip's description:—“ The bones of the head, with the exception of a small fragment of the operculum, are wanting, but the impressions left upon the matrix show that they were sculptured in rather a bold pattern, not unlike the ornament on some of the cranial bones of some of the Holoptychii, and consequently differing in this respect from the corresponding parts in Dipterus. The pectoral fins are very indistinctly seen. They appear to have had a short obtuse lobe forming the base, and extending therefrom a set of numerous fin-rays more elongated than those forming the pectoral fin in Dipterus.” To Dipterus, however, in Sir Philip Egerton's opinion, its affinities pointed, as far as could be gathered from the structure of the body as displayed in the specimens, his description concluding as follows:—“ The absence of all evidence as to the dental apparatus of Tristichopterus is much to be regretted. On other points the affinities between this genus and Dipterus are so striking that they cannot be classified in separate families. Accordingly he assigned to Tristichopterus a place along with Dipterus in the family of “Cœlacanthi,” the term being used in its former extended sense, not as now restricted to the peculiar genera Cœlacanthus, Undina, Holophagus, and Macropoma.

Two Ordovician graptolite assemblages are recognised and described for the first time in the allochthonous siliceous assemblage or succession forming the Guayacan Group of central Sonora in northwestern Mexico. A Middle Ordovician assemblage referable to the Nemagraptus gracilis-Climacograptus wilsoni zonal interval occurs in the upper siliceous shale of unit 1 of the Guayacan Group and an Upper Ordovician assemblage representative of the Dicellograptus ornatus Zone of the Pacific faunal province has been collected from shaly partings in the bedded radiolarian chert constituting unit 2. The stratigraphical make-up of the siliceous assemblage bears a striking similarity to the better known—and correlative—Lower Palaeozoic siliceous succession of central and northern Nevada, giving credence to the hypothesis that the Palaeozoic siliceous assemblage in northwestern Mexico was originally the extension of the Nevadan assemblage into California, which has been transposed to its present position along a left-lateral megashear of the magnitude of at least 1000 km.

A review of the proximal development of the spinose species remaining in the form genus Climacograptus Hall has led to the proposal to restrict the genus to Climacograptus bicornis (Hall), its type species, and to two other septate species of early Middle Ordovician age (Llandeilo-early Caradoc) with a primitive type of proximal-end development. The genus Euclimacograptus, with Climacograptus hastatus T. S. Hall as the type species, is proposed for spinose Upper Ordovician climacograptids with an advanced proximal-end development. The genus Ensigraptus, with Climacograptus caudatus Lapworth as the type species, is also proposed for species homeomorphic with those included in Normalograptus Legrand but with a less advanced proximal-end development. Five species are described.

Forty-six years ago James Geikie published the third edition of his book, The Great Ice Age, where he expressed the view that there were five main cold periods, separated by four warmer, within the Pleistocene. Despite the enormous research by glaciologists undertaken since Geikie's time no one has yet disproved this fundamental concept; indeed, research, though perhaps casting out some of the evidence used by Geikie, has only supported his hypothesis. Yet the works of this great geologist are neglected and apparently scorned, for the terminology which he set up in plain English to indicate his five glacial periods, determined by a very wide survey, has been discarded in favour of a Continental nomenclature having only a local significance. In this work I follow Geikie in naming glacial periods, first, second, third, etc., for this has a world-wide application. It is from the writings of this master, and also those of Professor J. E. Marr of Cambridge, that I gathered the general ideas expressed here in Part I, (a), (b), and (c).

Having been requested to act on a Committee of the British Association, appointed to devise and apply methods for measuring the comparative intensity of earthquake shocks, and having been shewn several ingenious contrivances by Mr David Milne (who suggested the inquiry) Lord Greenock, and other persons, an apparatus occurred to me which should unite the requisites of Simplicity, Compactness, Comparability, and an easy adjustment of Sensibility according to circumstances.

Mr Milne had not failed to distinguish the ends for which instruments (which for obvious reasons were to be self-registering) ought to be devised, such as the measurement of horizontal concussions, of vertical elevation, and of heaving or angular motion of the surface. It is no part of my present object to consider the probable movements of the soil in earthquakes. I limit myself to the description of a single instrument intended to measure lateral shocks, such as are experienced by objects placed upon a table which is abruptly shoved forwards.

The distribution of Arenig graptolite faunas and zones of differing metamorphic fades help to establish a polyphase imbrication history for the complex. A further complication is introduced by the presence within the imbricate stack of lava sequences of comparable age but with contrasting geochemical signatures of island-arc and oceanic island basalts, and oceanic island sequences of markedly different Arenig ages. Strike-slip mechanisms appear the most likely means of introducing such a disparate assortment of elements into the Ballantrae complex and an origin in a continental margin transform zone is preferred.

A diversity of filamentous microfungi was discovered from thallus surfaces of epiphytic lichens preserved in Bitterfeld and Baltic amber. We report seven distinct morphologies of dematiaceous hyphomycetes, some of which closely resemble species of the extant genera Sporidesmium, Taeniolella s. lat. and Taeniolina. Both the placement of the fungi on their substrates and the exquisite preservation of delicate structures indicate that the fungi were fully developed before they were engulfed by fresh resin. The lichens probably grew on the trunks of resin producing trees and became embedded in resin flows together with their fungal associates. The findings demonstrate that a wide range of presumably specialised fungi have lived on living and decomposing lichen thalli at least since the Paleogene. The findings add an interesting new component to the as yet poorly known mycota of the ancient European amber forests.

There is a general consensus that the global chemistry of ocean water has not changed markedly during the Phanerozoic. Nevertheless, significant changes have occurred in the geochemical cycles of some elements and patterns of change have been reconstructed, in various forms, through consideration of the isotope ratios 13C/12C, 34S/32S, 87Sr/86Sr and 143Nd/144Nd. There have also been attempts to constrain variations in the isotopic composition of sea water itself through measurements of D/H and 18O/16O, the latter both directly and indirectly. Dissolved constituents in seawater display secular changes in isotopic composition as a consequence of quite different driving mechanisms. δ13C and δ34S variations are broadly correlated and linked by carbon and sulphur exogenic cycle interaction through redox reactions (the “free oxygen cycle”). The 87Sr/86Sr trend is determined by the balance among different Sr inputs to the oceanic pool, which vary in their isotopic composition (limestones, old granitic material and young basaltic material). Neodymium isotope variations are not globally synchronous. Changes in 143Nd/144Nd are influenced by local erosion products from continental landmasses and can therefore be different for coexisting palaeocean basins.

The present investigation was undertaken to throw some light upon the nature and mode of action of the peripheral nervous mechanism of the uterus.

Previous work has demonstrated that the organ, like other viscera, has an autonomic action. That the uterus and vagina can function independently of the central nervous system has been shown both clinically and experimentally by Sir J. Y. Simpson (1), Goltz (2), Riemann (3), Rein (4), Kabierske and Heidenhain (5), Masius (6), and Kurdinowsky (7).

The nervous mechanism of the uterus may be divided into a central and a peripheral part.

The section Farinosae was first denned by Pax (1) in 1889 with citation of P. farinosa and P. sibirica as representative species. He published at the same time his section Auriculatae. The only distinction given of apparent moment between the two sections is the shape and size of the capsule. In Auriculatae it is globose and included in the calyx, while in Farinosae it is cylindric and more or less exserted. This diagnostic character was found to be unsatisfactory, with the result that in 1905 Pax (2) in his Monograph combined the two sections under Farinosae. There was still an undercurrent of opinion that a division was justified, and at the Third Primula Conference in 1913 Bayley Balfour (3) reverted to the previous arrangement without, however, any stated reasons. At the Fourth Primula Conference held in 1928 the sections of the genus were reviewed by Smith and Forrest (4), who again subordinated Auriculatae to Farinosae. In 1932 appeared Bruun's Cytological Studies in Primula (5), with a detailed analysis of the species then available in cultivation. Here valid evidence was given that certain species assessed in the past as within Auriculatae did differ cytologically from the general run of species included without question in the Farinosae. But the cytological evidence taken alone tends to associate these Auriculatae with other species quite dissimilar from the broad morphological point of view. The problem is referred to again by Wright Smith (6) in his Hooker Lecture, where it is admitted that the cytological data do support the view that there is a degree of fundamental difference between the two sections. But the difficulty still remains of finding satisfactory macroscopic distinctions. The present authors have come to the conclusion that it is better to keep both under the general heading Farinosae rather than to separate them by slender and often misleading characters supported as these may be by the cytology. In any case much remains to be done on the cytological side, as the majority of the species are yet to be analysed, and for general purposes the incorporation of the cytological data in an analytical key would not be satisfactory.