Few genera of Fossil Fishes contain so large a number of welldefined species aa Agassiz' widely-distributed and well-known genus Pholidophorus. Above forty species have been more or less fully described by Agassiz and subsequent authors; the geological range extending from the Rhætic to the Purbeck Beds inclusive. The group consists mainly of small or moderate-sized fishes, but few that can be termed large; and with the exception of one species (P. maximus), the generic identity of which is doubtful, it contains no fishes of magnitude.

Below the “Coniston Limestone Series”—if we include under this general title not only the Coniston Limestone proper, but also the “Style End Grassing Beds” of Long Sleddale and the “Dufton Shales” of the Cross Fell area—no fossiliferous beds have hitherto been detected in the Lake—district till the horizon of the Upper Skiddaw Slates (Llanvirn Series) is reached. Between these two horizons are placed the thick and varied volcanic rocks which have usually been grouped together under the name of the “ Borrowdale Series ” (the “ Green Slates and Porphyries ” of Prof. Sedgwick); though it may be taken as certain that this name covers more than one series of volcanic ejecta. Up to the present time, no strata containing fossils have been detected in connection with any of the rooks which have been included under the general title of the “ Borrowdale Series.”

At the close of the Glacial Period in North America the basin of the Red River was occupied by a large lake which has received the name of Lake Agassiz. It extended from what is now Lake Winnipeg southward for some hundreds of miles to the watershed of the Minnesota River. The bottom of this old lake now forms an extensive level plain famous for its fertility and the fine crops of wheat it produces.

The following is an attempt to determine a lower limit to the time required for the accumulation of the stratified rocks. It is not supposed to be an accurate estimate, for the data on which it is based are confessedly imperfect; but it is thought that the method employed may be of some little use when more exact determinations can be made of the physical constants involved.

Igneous rocks and crystalline schists are often associated with each other in such a manner as to compel the conclusion that either the igneous rocks have been formed out of the schists or the schists out of the igneous rocks. There are other cases in which the two kinds of rock are less intimately related; parallel structure is wanting, the junctions are sharply defined, and there is no evidence of an original mineral gradation. These are examples of the ordinary irregular intrusion of igneous rocks in schists. But there is a third group in which the characters are intermediate. In these rocks, structural parallelism is more or less distinct, and there is often a partial blending of the two kinds of rock at the line of contact; but other indications forbid the belief that the schists have been elaborated out of the associated igneous masses.

Very little information has hitherto been published in regard to the fossil fishes of the well-known Miocene formation of the Maltese Islands. Dr. Leith Adams enumerates seventeen species in his latest contribution to the subject, but these are almost exclusively founded upon detached teeth. It is, therefore, of considerable interest to be able to place on record the discovery of a new and tolerably complete fish, obtained from an excavation made some months ago for new docks in the harbour of Valetta.

Mr. C. S. Wilkingson, Government Geologist for New South Wales, had the kindness to entrust his collection of Australian Tertiary plant-remains to me, for which I now express my most sincere thanks to him. I laid the results of my investigations before the Imperial Academy of Sciences of Vienna, in a Memoir, entitled: “Contributions to the Tertiary Flora of Australia, Part II.,” which follows a Memoir already published under the same title, Part I., in the forty-seventh volume of the “Denkschriften” of the same Academy.

It was my good fortune in 1884 to receive two interesting collections of fossil plants from New Zealand, for which I am indebted to the kindness of Professor (now Sir Julius) von Haast, of Christchurch, and Professor T. J. Parker, of Dunedin. In these collections seventeen localities of fossil plants are represented which belong to three formations: the Tertiary, the Cretaceous, and the Triassic formations.