The search for small vertebrates in deposits of Pleistocene age has, within the last few years, been prosecuted with much zeal by several workers, and has brought to light the remains of many species of mammals, as well as birds, reptiles, and amphibia; the bones in some instances occurring in great numbers. The remains of fishes, however, have but rarely been found with the bones of other vertebrata, and never in any abundance. Some interesting discoveries of fish-remains have nevertheless been made; but the records of them are scattered through various publications, and it seems very desirable to bring all this information together.

In 1899 Messrs. Rupert Jones and Henry Woodward stated that Belinurus “has not at present been found in rocks of earlier age than the Coal-measures.” Belinurus grandœvus, described in the same paper, was referred, with probability, to the Lower Carboniferous. A writer (“ R. W. E.”) in the Ottawa Naturalist for January, 1900, thereupon called attention to the record of Belinurus from the Kiltorcan Beds of Ireland. This record is founded on Mr. W. H.

Additional Notes.—These further references and fuller quotations are here given with the view of making the History of the Sarsens, or Sarsen Stones, more complete and more easily available, especially by indicating the chronological succession of observed facts and published opinions.

I thought, perhaps, some readers of the Geological Magazine might be interested in a few notes taken during the International Geological Congress excursion to the Massif of Central France and the region of the Causses, and on the chief rocks there, with the best places for finding examples.

The rarity of insect remains from the Carboniferous rocks of the British Isles is demonstrated by the small number of genera and species included in the lists published by such authorities as Dr. Henry Woodward and Mr. S. H. Scudder. A portion of a wing, with a neuration unlike that of any specimen yet described, having recently been exhumed, it may be deemed not unworthy of notice.

Readers of this Magazine may remember that early last August there were descriptions in many provincial and even in some London newspapers of an extensive ‘landslip,’ which had occurred on the side of the mountain called Carnedd Dafydd, on the eastern side of the valley of Nant Ffrancon, in North Wales. The impression conveyed was perhaps somewhat exaggerated, and yet the phenomenon was on a scale quite large enough to be of geological importance.

In the Geological Magazine for January, 1901 (n.s., Dec. IV, Vol. VIII, pp. 3, 4), Professor Burckhardt describes certain markings in the sandstone matrix of specimens of Hyperodapedon and Rhynchosaurus in the British Museum, from Elgin, Shropshire, and Warwickshire (the last, however, not being, as implied by the legend to the figure, represented in the Museum). He believes that these are hollow imprints “left by Echinoderms of a Euryalid shape, having peripheral arms, either simple or forked,” but he appeals to specialists to decide to which group of Echinoderms they are due. Since these marks are said to be exceedingly numerous, and since Dr. Burckhardt uses them as evidence of contemporaneity, I thought it my duty, as the specialist nearest at hand, to examine these statements without delay.

Among the fossil fishes of the Talbragar Beds (Jurassic?) described by Dr. A. Smith Woodward in a memoir of the Geological Survey of New South Wales (1895), there is the ventral portion of the abdominal region of a Cœlacanth fish, having one of the pectoral fins well shown. The fin is shown in counterpart, and is thus described:— “It exhibits, as usual, the characteristic obtuse lobation and the large fringe of articulated attenuated dermal rays, and is unique in displaying some of the eudoskeletal supporting bones. These elements seem to have been well ossified, though with persistent cartilage internally. At the base of the fin there occurs a broken fragment of bone1 incapable of determination; but in the lobe of the fin itself there is a series of four well-defined, hourglass-shaped supports. Of these bones the anterior three are much elongated, and nearly equally slender, while the fourth is much more robust and expanded at its distal end. The four elements radiate from the anterior half of the base of the fin; and it seems very probable that some smaller cartilage behind and near the distal border of the lobe have disappeared from lack of ossification. The fin-rays gradually increase in length from the anterior border to the middle of the lobe, whence they decrease again backwards, and finally become extremely delicate.”