Of the many private collections of vertebrate fossils found on or off the coast of the Eastern counties, none surpass in palæontological and also in geological interest the fine collection made with much zeal and care by Mr. J. J. Owles, of Yarmouth, inasmuch as the larger portion of the specimens are exclusively the remains of Postglacial Mammals, and were brought up in the fishermen’s dredge, either from, or in close proximity to the well-known Dogger Bank, thus proving conclusively the existence of submerged Pleistocene or Postglacial land lying off the Eastern coast in the North Sea. Prof. Boyd Dawkins is the only author, as far as I am at present aware, who has made any reference to this really valuable series of remains, and then only incidentally in his memoir, “On the Distribution of Postglacial Mammals.”

Notes and references accumulating for some years have induced me to offer some remarks on a new fossil Estheria, and on some already known, of Carboniferous, of Permian, and of Triassic age; also a description of some fossil Ostracoda from the Ironstone of Shotover, near Oxford, involving remarks on all the known Wealden species; and lastly notes on some species found in the Purbeck strata of the Subwealden Boring, near Battle, in Sussex.

From the sandstone (i), which Professor Ansted asserts, though without giving his reasons, to be “no doubt modern,” and to have been “deposited before” [just before?] “or during the last great elevation,” down to the superficial clays and sands, there is not a scrap of any other Secondary or Tertiary rock in situ to be found on any of these islands. We leap at once from this sandstone to clays and sands of Post-Tertiary date. Mr. Duncan, in his History of Guernsey (edit. 1841, p. 513), says that “flint and chert nodules, containing impressions of shells, etc., are frequently discovered beneath the soil in places which preclude the probable transport by the hand of man.”

To the student of Cretaceous palæontology there could be suggested, probably, no more puzzling question than that of the determination of the species of the genus Micraster. It seems not unlikely that Professor Forbes was of this opinion when, in 1850, he reduced to varieties of a single species—that of Micraster cor-anguinum—no fewer than seventeen previously supposed species, or subspecies, of the genus. It is true that, out of compunction, perhaps, for such wholesale slaughter, he forthwith established one new species, the Mieraster cor-bovis, and pointed out the probable existence of another —“a small Micraster with a very elevated extremity from the Chalk of Lyme.” This, however, seems scarcely to make up for the absorption or obliteration of all but one of the previously described species. And, seeing that several of these so-called varieties of Micraster cor-anguinum are recognized as species by many continental palæontologists, it becomes an interesting subject for inquiry whether our English Chalk does not contain more than one species in addition to the recognized Micraster cor-anguinum, and cor-bovis?

1. Dentalium ingens, de Koninck, and D. ornatum, de Kon. (Descrip. Animaux Foss., pp. 317 and 318, t. 22, f. 2 and 3).— The first of these species has been often recorded from Scotch Carboniferous rocks, but, so far as I am aware, the second is new not only to Scotland, but in British Carboniferous rocks generally. Specimens were forwarded to Prof. L. G. de Koninck, M.D., who was kind enough to confirm my determination. Our specimens of both the above species show the growth striæ of the shell to have been waved, like the septa of some Orthoceratites, consequently I presume the anterior apertures would be similar. In Prof. de Koninck's figures the striæ are oblique, and the anterior aperture is described as oblique. D. ingens is from the shale above the Skateraw Limestone (L. Carb. Limestone Group) at East Barns, near Dunbar, and D. ornatum from shale above the Roscobie Limestone at Roscobie.