Geology is a science which owes, not only its inception, but its continued existence largely to its non-professional disciples and lovers. In fact, of the two classes existing at the present time, the ‘amateur’ and the ‘professional,’ it would by no means be difficult to show that the former gave birth to. the latter, and that some of the best living professional geologists have been recruited from the ranks of the amateur class. To a small band of early amateurs we are indebted for the foundation alike of the Geological Society and the Geological Survey in this country.

In the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, ser. VII, vol. i (1898), pp. 333–334, pi. xxvii, a numerous series of fossil Ostracoda, with bivalved carapaces, having more or less resemblance to those of Cypridina, were described and figured. The specimens selected had been collected by various observers in different regions; and comprised two from the Tertiary of France, two from the Cretaceous of Belgium, one from the Permian of Durham, seven from the Carboniferous of Britain, three from the Devonian of Devon, three from the Upper Silurian and two from the Lower Silurian (Ordovician) of distant regions. References were made to several allied Palæozoic forms; and one other species from the Carboniferous of North America (Ulrich) and two from the Upper Silurian of Scania (Moberg) ought to have been mentioned.

In the broad Alluvial tract which borders the Ouse between Oakley and Clapham, north of Bedford, there is a gravel-pit in which a small anticline of the Great Oolite was abruptly encountered amidst the regularly stratified river-deposits. The pit is situated immediately north of the Oakley road and east of the Midland Railway.

In a collection of Cretaceous fossils from Sinai obtained by Mr. T. Barron, F.G.S., which has been entrusted to me for determination by the Geological Survey of Egypt, I found several specimens of Linthia oblonga, a form of Echinoid which appears to have escaped the attention of modern writers on the palæontology of the Sinai Peninsula. In tracing the history of this species it is ascertained that d'Orbigny first figured and described it under the genus periaster during the year 1856 in the Pal. Française Terr. Crétacés Échinodermes, pl. 900, pp. 275, 276, where it is referred to as having been collected by M. Lefébvre at Mount Garèbe, near Suez, from rocks regarded as of Turonian age, in association with Radiolites.

Last year, while the Port Elizabeth Brick and Tile Company were quarrying a clayey rock at Despatch, near Uitenhage, a number of bones were discovered in the rock. Though the discovery created some little interest, no one seems to have appreciated the scientific value of the find, and large numbers of the bones were made into bricks. A few fragments of vertebræ and ribs have been collected by the Port Elizabeth Museum, and recently an attempt has been made to rescue some more of the bones that still remain in the rock. So far a number of very imperfect fragments of vertebræ—cervical, dorsal, and caudal—a fairly good femur, an imperfect scapula, portions of many ribs, and an ungual phalanx, have been discovered. The examination of these remain leaves no doubt that the skeleton is that of an Opisthoeælian Dinosaur of moderate size.

The basalt of Mullion Island, with the intercalated radiolarian chert, is well known from the descriptions of Teall and Howard Fox.1 It is a fine-grained minutely vesicular basalt, consisting mainly of radiating felspar laths and interstitial pale purplish-brown augite, and occurring in peculiar pillowy or bale-like masses. Owing to this curious structure and its intercalation with the chert the basalt is considered to be a submarine lava.