The Pycnodonts were the coral fishes of Mesozoic seas, with a deepened body, produced face, and a small mouth having grasping and grinding teeth, capable of obtaining their hard-shelled food from hollows and crannies. They are evidently not to be regarded as closely allied to any of the typical coral fishes of Tertiary and existing seas, which are spiny-finned teleosteans. They are merely Lepidotus-like and Dapedius-like forms with adaptations to a similar mode of life. The study of their skeleton is therefore of great interest.

The conclusions of Lovén as to the composition of the perignathic girdle of D. cylindricus are confirmed in essential particulars, while those of Duncan & Sladen are shown to be based upon imperfectly preserved material. The processes, which may project freely for a varying distance above the rest of the girdle, are slender. The actual ridges are represented, as in Plesiechinus, by the slightly thickened and projecting inner surfaces of the unpaired primordial interambulacral plates. The rest of the interradial portion of the girdle is interpreted as being made of the bevelled edges of the buttresses which radiate over the interambulacra of the adoral surface. These sloping surfaces, here called “false ridges”, are believed to be specialized and somewhat extended as “rests” or “slides” for the inclined pyramids; thus forecasting the articulation between lantern and girdle found in the Clypeastroida. The retractor muscles were attached to the upper parts of the processes, and it is argued that the protractors must have sprung from the small true ridges, the false ridges having no function as muscle supports. In the absence of positive evidence, radial compass muscles are presumed to have been absent.

A Comparative study of the whole of the evidence concerning the Palæozoic floor beneath the South-East of England and the manner in which the various members of the Mesozoics are disposed upon it has led the present writer to conclude that the area, originally defined by Professor P. F. Kendall, over which the effects of the operation of a “posthumous” Charnian axis may be discerned, can be greatly extended, more particularly to the eastward. The evidence, indeed, strongly suggests the presence of a second Charnian axis beneath Suffolk, proceeding thence south-eastward to North France.

In the course of an investigation into British resources of sands and rocks for glass-making and refractory purposes, which is being carried out by my colleague Dr. P. G. H. Boswell, it became desirable to search for an alumina-bearing siliceous rock low in iron-content. Among other rocks considered by Dr. Boswell was the granophyre of Brandy Gill, and a sample, obtained from Mr. W. Hemingway, was submitted to Dr. H. F. Harwood for analysis. So far as industry is concerned, the analysis indicates that the iron-percentage of the rock is too high for its use in glass manufacture. As such an analysis would be of interest and value to geologists—there being few first-class analyses of Lake District igneous rocks—and as it seemed undesirable that only a bare record should occur in a technological publication, Dr. Boswell handed to me the analysis and a sample of the granophyre, with the suggestion that the rock might be described in the pages of the Geological Magazine.

In the opening article of the Geological Magazine (Vol. I, p. 5, 1864) Mr. J. W. Salter remarks: “An obscure but novel group of organic remains comes to light in some well-worked district for which we have as yet no fixed geological place,” and this description may well apply to the fauna dealt with in the following pages.