Among the Plesiosaurian remains recently mounted for exhibition in the Reptile Gallery at the Natural History Museum is a very fine pelvic-girdle belonging to a species of the genus Cryptoclidus (Seeley), and forming part of the same skeleton (Leeds Coll., R. 2616) as the pectoral-girdle recently described and figured by the present writer. These specimens are perhaps the most perfect known, the bones being quite uncrushed, free from matrix, and, except that they are cracked and broken to a slight degree, in much the same condition as if they had been obtained by maceration from a recent reptile. They clearly belonged to an old individual in which ossification had nearly reached its maximum: this is shown (1) by the complete union of the coracoid and scapula with one another in the middle line closing the coraco-scapular foramen; (2) by the sharpness of some of the edges of the bones, e.g. of part of the anterior border of the pubis; (3) by the great solidity of the bones, and by the accuracy with which the pectoral and pelvic elements fit together to form the glenoid and acetabular cavities respectively, showing that the cartilage which separates them in the young animal had been ossified.

As is well known, there are in Switzerland a good many cold mineral, but very few powerful thermal springs, a fact which is in a great measure due to the scarcity of the younger series of eruptive rocks, such as give rise to the abundant hot springs of Bohemia, the Taunus and Eiffel districts, Auvergne, the Pyrenees, and other localities possessing similar geological features.

I HAVE read with much interest Mr. Horace Brown's account in the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE for February, 1896, of the boring for water in the Trias at Stratford-on-Avon. In it he makes brief allusion to the sandstones in the Upper Keuper, and refers to Mr. Howell's statement of the occurrence of certain sandstones near Henley-in-Arden. He does not seem to be aware that similar sandstones are more or less widely spread over a considerable area in some parts of the Midlands, north and north-east of Henley and north-west of Warwick at a higher level, the highest point being 445 feet above the level of the sea. Many years ago I noticed some sandstone in Miss Phillips' park at Edstone not given in the Survey Map, and I informed my friend the late Professor Ramsay of the fact. These sandstones may also be seen in many places, especially in the parish of Rowington. They are exposed on the banks of the canal and along the road leading to Warwick, and were formerly obtained from quarries in the parish now long ago filled up, according to certain old documents in our parish chest, which gives an account of payments made for stone from this place, and our fine church and others in the neighbourhood and some old houses are built of it. When the Great Western Railway was made here a deep cutting through the sandstones was exposed along the line at Finwood in this parish; and lately they were detected when the new line to Henley was constructed. All the higher ridges in this district—they can hardly be called hills—are composed of the sandstones, the lower ground, where the marls and sandstones have been denuded, being formed of the red marls below. Sections are generally rare, as the stone is seldom employed except at Shrewley quarry near here, where the best section of the Upper Keuper beds are exposed. There are about two beds of useful stone: the upper one is inferior to the lower or bottom rock, which is a hard sandstone of some thickness and makes a good building stone, and is used by the Canal Company. This quarry is famous for many interesting fossils so scarce in the Trias, and is noted for the remains of fish, viz., Semionotus, Acrodus (spines and teeth), footprints of Labyrinthodon, and, the rarest of all, moulds of several species of mollusks, the only British locality where any shells have been found. I may add that the wells in the parish are fairly supplied with water from the sandstones, but it is hard and more or less charged with sulphates.

In the third edition of his Text-Book of Geology, Sir Archibald Geikie has discussed the question whether fossils can be wholly depended upon to indicate the age of rocks when similar or representative species are found in areas wide apart. Thus he tells us (p. 665) that in Bohemia and Russia some of the most characteristic Upper Silurian organisms are found beneath strata replete with Lower Silurian life. Again, speaking of the close of the Silurian period, he says (p. 760): “There is every reason to believe that for a long time the marine sedimentation of Upper Silurian type continued to prevail in some areas, while the probably lacustrine type of the Old Red Sandstone had already been established in others.” He also tells us (p. 828) that “In the West of Scotland there occur among the red sandstones (some of which contain Old Red Sandstone fishes) bands of limestone full of true Carboniferous Limestone corals and brachiopods.” Again (p. 665), he draws our attention to the statement that “In Australia a flora with Jurassic affinities and a Carboniferous Limestone fauna were contemporaneous” while we may conclude our extracts by one which says: “At the present day the higher fauna of Australia is more nearly akin to that which flourished in Europe far back in Mesozoic time, than to the living fauna of any other region of the globe.”

A Long the branch which is marked earlier by Cyrtometopus and Cheirurus (sens. str.), the last stage of development corresponds with Salter's subgenus Crotalocephalus. This is almost entirely restricted to Devonian beds, but it is linked to Cheirurus (sens. str.) in time and zoological characters by Ch. Sternbergi (Boeck) and Ch. Quenstedti (Barr.), in which the glabellar side-furrows hardly meet in the middle of the glabella. The important subgeneric characters of Crotalocephalus are the continuous first and second side-furrows, the triangular basal lobes which nearly or quite meet in the centre of the glabella at their apices, and the nearly straight obliquely-directed third side-furrows of the glabella. The earlier forms of the subgenus have their triangular basal lobes still separated by a median portion of the glabella, as in Ch. Quenstedti, from Étage E. This species has a rather curiously specialized kind of pygidium, with only two pairs of long spinose pleuræ the third pair is very short and rudimentary, and of the fourth pair there is no trace. It is a noteworthy point that the pygidia of this subgenus are, as a rule, almost identical with those in the group of Cheirurus (sens. str.), with three equal pleuræ with free ends (vide antea), and do not show the enlargement of the first pair, as in the Russian Cheirurus (sens. str.).

In the following paper I propose to give an account of some observations upon the structure and succession of the rocks of the Southern Highlands. By the term Southern Highlands I mean that part of the Scottish Highlands lying immediately to the north-west of the great line of fault separating the older rocks of the former area from the younger Old Red Sandstone series of the low grounds.