In a paper recently read before the Geological Society, Mr. Dawkins has re-stated his views concerning the climate of the Pleistocene period, and has replied to certain objections to his theory brought forward by myself in former numbers of this Magazine. After carefully reading the paper referred to, I find no reason io alter or modify what I have written upon this question. Mr. Dawkins has unfortunately missed the point of my objections; and my argument, as it seems to me, remains unanswered. But as that gentleman has introduced some new matter into his own argument, I shall endeavour as briefly as may be to review his position.

In a recent paper (American Journal of Science and Arts, vol. iii., March, 1872), I founded a new genus, under the name of Conchicolites, for the reception of some singular Tubicolar Annelides found growing upon the shells of Orthocerata in the Lower Silurian of the North of England.

Calceola sandalina, both by its generic and specific name, means a little shoe or slipper. It is a common fossil in the Devonian rocks of the Eifel and other continental localities, and was found years ago by Mr. Godwin-Austen at Ogwell, near Chircombe Bridge, in Devonshire.

In a paper of mine on. “The Glacial Phenomena of the Yorkshire Uplands,” read before the Geological Society of London in the spring of 1872, compared the valley of the Wye in Derbyshire to those of the Aire and Calder in Yorkshire. This was a mistake: the Wye rises on the west side of the geological axis and crosses the anticlinal; but its valley does not cross the physical axis, which is nowhere broken through, as in the cases of the Aire and Calder. The lowest part of the watershed at the head of the Wye basin is at Doveholes, near Chapel-en-le-Frith. I made some observations by aneroid to ascertain the height of this point. The watershed south of Doveholes was by aneroid 1300 feet above the sea, and that north of Doveholes 1250 feet; but as the glass was falling on the day of my visit, these heights are too great by somewhat less than 75 feet, the total amount of the fall. This will make them between 1225 and 1300, and between 1175 and 1250 feet respectively. On another occasion I estimated the height of the watershed north of Doveholes at 1200 feet, and that on the Peak Forest Railway at 1175 feet. A couple of miles to the N.N.E. I found Sparrow Pit to be 1350 feet above the sea, and Perrydale 1200; the plateau above Perrydale 1350; the watershed under Mam Tor 1500; and the lowest point of Rushup Edge 1525 feet above the sea.

In former papers I have described central Lancashire as capable of division into three plains of different elevations. The lowest being often beneath high-water mark, and always below the 25-foot Ordnance contour; the second ranging from 25 and 50 feet to 500 feet above the sea, terminating at the foot of the steep escarpment at the western edge of the Lancashire and Yorkshire moorlands forming the Pendle portion of the Pennine chain, with an average elevation of 1200 feet. Both the lower plains are much covered with drift, and the rock-surface at the sea-coast is often 50 feet below low-water mark, steadily rising in one gradual inclined plain, eastwards, or towards the Fells.

There have been several Earthquakes lately, and they are still attributed to volcanic action. As the Quarterly Review of 1st January, 1869, tells us, the most popular notion regarding these phenomena “is the hypothesis of contraction of the mass of this globe by radiation of heat into space.” If we examine this sentence by geological reasoning, confining ourselves to those things, and actions, which are visible, and tangible, we find two causes of objection to it. We ask, whence is the heat to radiate into space? and where is the mass capable of contraction? There are certain laws which rule atoms, and worlds; we have only to understand these laws, and their effects, to enable us to comprehend every phenomena upon earth; man has not been able to do this, but has sought interpretations from his own imagination, till he has been led into innumerable difficulties.