Anyone accustomed to the peculiar outlines which ancient ice action has produced in the Alps, cannot fail to be struck, at the first glance, by the contours to the upper parts of the Great Ormeshead and of the Carboniferous Limestone range which extends from near the village of Rhos to the Little Ormeshead; and a more minute examination only strengthens the conviction that, while the leading outlines of the hills are due somewhat to upheaval, but mainly to denudation—probably marine, the surface of the higher ground has in many cases been affected by ice.

Among the many singular discoveries made in the ruins of Pompeii, and deposited in that most interesting of Museums, the Museo Borbonico, in the city of Naples, are a variety of shells, principally species now found in the Mediterranean Sea, and so far of interest as an illustration of the persistency of certain known species within the historic period, no difference whatever being observable between the disinterred and living specimens. On a close examination I observed, besides those from the neighbouring seas, species from distant countries, for example:—Conus textilis, Triton femorale, Meleagrina margaritifera (Pearl Oyster), species only found in the Indian and Eastern seas. I think, therefore, that this may be regarded as part of a Natural History collection. Assuming the truth of this conjecture, its antiquity is without a precedent. Did the original proprietor form one of a Natural History Society of Pompeii, of which the distinguished Naturalist Pliny, who perished at Pompeii, was a member? It would also be curious, in these days of research for priority of names, to know how they were described. Such a discovery might disturb existing nomenclature, and increase the perplexity already felt in naming collections. But laying aside fanciful conjectures, the collection is further instructive from the condition and perfect preservation in which the specimens are found, after an interment of nearly 1,800 years. Besides the collection in the Museo Borbonico, there is still standing in a villa at Pompeii, a fountain decorated with shells of the Mediterranean, one species of which, viz. Murex Brandaris, retains its colour and general freshness and is not to be distinguished from living examples; while the same species, from the Italian Tertiaries, are colourless and in that friable condition characteristic of shells even of the most recent geological period, pointing, like other discoveries, to the great antiquity of the most modern Tertiary deposits as compared with the era of the human race.

In the autumn of 1864, Mr. Ezekiel Williamson discovered fragments of trilobites in some slaty beds belonging to “Lower Lingula Flags” of the Geological Survey, on the right bank of the river Mawddach, a little above its junction with the Eden, and four and a half miles directly north from Dolgelly. Portions of an Olenus and of a Agnostus were found, but in too fragmentary a condition to be determined. Last summer Mr. J. Chamberlain Barlow, of Birmingham, found the same fossils in great abundance and good preservation on both sides of the Mawddach, opposite to Dolmelynllyn. During the present year I have, from these beds, added another species of Agnostus to the scanty fauna; and, after considerable trouble, in consequence of the rocks being greatly faulted, have Been able to determine the true position of this new fossiliferous zone.

The structure and marine denudation of the district between Torbay and Babbicombe Bay has been so ably unravelled by Mr. Pengelly, as to leave any other observer comparatively little to say. Among his most important discoveries must be ranked that of lithodomous perforations in limestone rocks at considerable altitudes above the sea.

The Pipe-clay beds of Tipperary appear so closely to resemble in character and position the deposits of the Mountain Limestone district of North Wales and North Staffordshire, that it may not be out of place to record some observations made by Mr. C. D. Blake, on Newton Abbot, in 1862, and kindly communicated to me. There are also one or two previously published notices of these deposits, to which reference must be made.

The announcement of the discovery of a Hyæna-den, near Laugharne, may possibly be of some interest to those of your readers who may be inclined to visit the bone caverns of South Wales during the approaching summer. In the autumn to last year J. R. Allen, Esq., of Albert Terrace, Regent's Park, London, was good enough to send me word that, during a few days' stay at Laugharne, he had discovered some fragments of bones in a limestone cavern known as the “Coygan cave;” adding, at the same time, that it was not known in the district that any one had hitherto found bones there, or that it had ever been explored for that purpose.

On the evening before I left Cambridge last term, I was informed by a man who brings me fossils, that some new coprolite diggings had been opened in the Fens. I was unfortunately unable to visit the workings then, but since my return to Cambridge, I have explored them in company with Mr. Moore, of St.Catherine's College. The workings are situate about a mile from Upware, which lies about twelve miles from Cambridge, and seven from Ely.

In answer to the observations made by Professor King in the June number of your valuable Magazine, I am quite ready to admit that several very important points in connection with the shell-structure and interior arrangements of the Spiriferidæ have still to be determinted, and I am always delighted when some new light can be thrown upon the subject.