One of the most notable additions made to the Gallery of Fossil Reptilia in the Natural History Museum during the last few years is the beautifully preserved Plesiosaurian skeleton which is represented in Plate IX.

In Nature of the 7th of March, Lord Kelvin reported the results of a series of experiments, which render it almost certain that Prof. J. Perry's hypothesis of the conductivity of rock increasing with the temperature is unsupported by evidence. He also stated that he had been led by later study to modify his original estimate of the age of the world, and to reduce it to about the same as estimated by Mr. Clarence King, viz. 24 million years. Thus geologists would find themselves restricted to a still shorter period for the evolution of the events of the world's history than they supposed.

In the Geological Magazine, 1887, Professor Nicholson and Mr. Marr drew attention to a group of fossiliferous shales detected in connection with the Borrowdale Volcanic Series.

The shell-structure of the Ammonoidea has received very inadequate attention from palæontologists; in most cases authors are content with describing the shell of the recent Nautilus, and saying that that of the Ammonites is exactly the same. Prof. Judd therefore suggested that I should take the subject up, when working as a research student under him. As a result, I have found that the resemblance of the Nautilus- to the Ammonite-shell is literally true; but the structure of the extinct forms throws an altogether new light on that of the recent one, while the usual homology of parts between the two requires, I think, revision.

The January number of this Magazine contains an interesting paper on a soda-bearing rock from Dinas Head, Cornwall, read by Mr. Howard Fox, F.G.S., at the Oxford meeting of the British Association. Mr. J. J. Harris Teall, F.R.S., supplied notes on the microscopic structure of some of the specimens; and four chemical analyses by Mr. J. Hort Player and Mr. Arthur F. Hosking are given in the paper, from which it appears that the specimens analysed are composed of from 64 to 66 per cent of silica; from 19 to 20 per cent. of alumina; 9.8 of soda; and small amounts (generally under 1 per cent.) of potash, titanic acid, ferric and ferrous oxides, magnesia and lime.

In the last volume of the Annals of British Geology (1893), just published, Professor Blake gives an abstract of a paper by me on “Variolite from Roundwood,” and incidentally calls attention to the discordance between the formulæ given by General McMahon, Dr. Roth, and myself, to explain the conversion of olivine into serpentine. I hasten at once to correct a slight error which occurs in my equation, but which, fortunately, does not affect the principal result of the argument, as the correct formula was used in making calculations. Amended, my equation is as follows:—

Since the publication of the Geological Survey Maps and Memoirs of Antrim, some additional evidence has been obtained bearing on the age of the trachyte of that district. In the year 1888, when engaged in traversing a line of section running from Belfast in a northerly direction across county Antrim to the Giant's Causeway, I was fortunate enough to notice in a large chalk quarry at Templepatrick railway station evidence which seemed to show that the trachyte was later than the Tertiary basalt sheets of the lower division; and, on further investigation into this interesting subject, additional evidence was procured that the trachytic eruption was older than the sheets of the upper series, and was, so to speak, of mid-basaltic age. Subsequently I accompanied the Director-General, Sir Archibald Geikie, on his visit of inspection to this locality, and he approved of my views. Professor Gilbert, of the United States Geological Survey, who was with us at the time, also agreed with the conclusions arrived at.

About two and a half miles east of Kidderminster, in North Worcestershire, is a wooded hill, marked and named Bissell Gorse on the original one-inch Ordnance Map [1831], Sheet 54, N.W. It is now on the six-inch Map [1882], Sheets Worcestershire VIII, S.E. and IX, S.W., named Bissell Wood. The hill lies just half-way between the villages of Stone and Churchill.