For the convenience of students a first essay is here made to tabulate the European species of Etoblattina, the genus of Cockroaches most numerously represented in Carboniferous times, both in Europe and America. All the species described up to the present time are introduced, together with a new British species, a description of which is added. It will be seen that Deichmüller's var. Stelzneri (regarded by him as a form of E. flabellata) and Geinitz's var. dyadica (regarded by him as another form of the same) are considered distinct species; and that E. Rollei, Deichm., is not included, this last being more probably a Gerablattina. E. Peachii, Woodw., is also omitted, as the tegmina are undeveloped and therefore present no features which could admit it into the table. On the other hand, Blattina intermedia, Gold., formerly described by me as a Gerablattina, has had new light thrown upon it by Kliver, showing it to be an Etoblattina, and it is accordingly introduced here.

Notwithstanding the large number of Mammalian remains which have been found in the Brick-Earth of the Thames Valley, they have for the most part been portions of the larger forms, and very few examples of the smaller Mammals have hitherto been discovered. Professor W. Boyd Dawkins and Mr. W. A. Sanford (Brit. Pleist. Mam. Pal. Soc. vol. for 1864, p. xxxvi, 1866) have noticed the occurrence of Arvicola amphibia in the Pleistocene of Ilford, Crayford, and Erith; while from the last-named locality Mr. R. W. Cheadle (Proc. W. London Sci. Assoc. vol. i. p. 71, 1876) recorded the remains of Spermophilus, which Mr. Lydekker has more recently (Cat. Foss. Mam. Brit. Mus. part i. 1885, p. 212) referred to Falconer's species S. erythrogenoides.

In a paper entitled “On Minerals new to Britain,” published in the Mineralogical Magazine, vol. v. p. 1, Professor Heddle mentions the occurrence of a bastite-serpentine at two localities in Aberdeenshire; one in the parish of Belhelvie, the other on the shore close to a curious rock named the Black Dog. A visit to the localities has enabled me to add to his account some particulars, and to offer one or two corrections which seem to me not unimportant.

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.

In 1886 the author, during a visit to Ilfracombe, obtained some specimens of Middle-Devonian limestones which, at the time of collecting, he supposed to be formed of Syringopora, on account of the granulated weathered surface, and especially since the coral named had been recorded from the locality.

Mention is made of this slab by Mr. E. Etheridge, jun., in his Presidential Address to the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, p. 50. The specimen is in the Museum of Natural History, Cromwell Eoad, South Kensington.

The slab shows a piece of fossil wood 2¾ in. long by about 1½ in. broad, the exact nature of which is not determinable on account of its bad state of preservation, but this is fortunately not germane to the subject; it lies flat and compressed and is surrounded on three sides by masses of Mollusca, in places two and three deep, which have doubtless been attached to the wood by their byssi. The anterior ends and in many cases the inferior borders are turned towards the piece of wood and are in close contact with it, while others are again attached to the first row, as in masses of living mussels.

Some years back the Earl of Enniskillen obtained a specimen of a fossil fish, found in the rich ichthyological treasury of the Lower Lias at Lyme Regis, which proclaimed itself at first sight to be an entirely new form, differing generically from all the previously-known fishes of the Mesozoic period.

The specimen which I intend briefly to notice was obtained by Dr. Grindrod, of Malvern, about two years since, from the red, compact Sandstones, immediately resting on the grey ‘Passage-beds’ at Ledbury. Dr. Grindrod has kindly lent it to me for description.

The lower bathyal Ocean Drilling Program Hole 1261A was sampled near an upper Quaternary oxygen minimum zone (OMZ). Glauconite, the percentage of the foraminiferal assemblage as benthic specimens and assemblage composition were used to investigate the behaviour of the OMZ. Benthic foraminifera and glauconite were comparable with the upper margin of the modern OMZ off California. The percentage abundances of U. peregrina and C. laevigata were on the Demerara Rise negatively correlated, the proportional abundance of U. peregrina increasing upwards through the section. This reflects variations in proximity to the upper margin of the OMZ. This might reflect either crustal subsidence or long-term shallowing of the OMZ during the earlier late Quaternary. Neither hypothesis can be accepted unequivocally. The purported subsidence can be ascribed to crustal loading by the Amazon and Orinoco deep-sea fans, but this would require that the palaeodepth to the top of the OMZ remains constant across several glacial–interglacial cycles. In contrast, it is difficult to envisage any mechanism that could have caused progressive shallowing of the OMZ across several glacial–interglacial cycles. The epifaunal Planulina wuellerstorfi is related to more oxic waters and enhanced current action. This suggests that intervals with more abundant P. wuellerstorfi were somewhat less dysoxic than those with few. These intervals approximate to those with more abundant C. laevigata. Superimposed on this low-frequency signal is a higher-frequency signal, indicated by a between-sample assemblage turnover index (ATIs) that might prove useful for long-range sequence stratigraphic correlation at bathyal depths.

In the fourth part of my Monograph on the Merostomata, published in last year’s volume of the Palæontographical Society’s annual issue, I drew attention to two very singular fossil remains which had been somewhat doubtfully referred by Mr. J. W. Salter to the genus Eurypterus. A portion, at least, of the remains referred by him to Eurypterus? mammatus are really plant-remains (as shown by Mr. Carruthers, op. cit., p. 168), whilst the remainder must, for the present, be classed with M. Jordan’s Arthropleura armatu, from the Coal-measures of Saarbruck, Rhenish Prussia, a very anomalous Crustacean (if it be a Crustacean at all, which I greatly doubt), but which is certainly not a Eurypterus.

During the year 1871, in connexion with his duties upon the Geological Survey of Sweden, Linnarsson made a careful study of the Lower Palaeozoic strata of Dalarne and Jemtland, publishing the fruits of his observations in the following year. Dalarne had been already most successfully investigated by Dr. Sven. Törnquist; but Linnarsson, familiar with details of the better known succession in Westrogothia, was enabled to throw much new light upon the crumpled and shattered strata of this region.

Certain opinions have been put forth during the last few years which do not seem to be quite in accordance with some facts which have come to our knowledge in working out systematically, various pits and sections in the Red Crag district, and we propose discussing in the following paper a few of the more salient points bearing upon the fauna, and the position in time and place of this particular series of deposits.

It is well known that the slates of the Borrowdale series in the Lake District furnish beautiful illustrations of faulting on a small scale; but so far as I am aware, no description of them, from this point of view, has as yet appeared. The accompanying Plate has been produced in Autotype from one of these slates, the surface of which was first most carefully smoothed and afterwards varnished. Every detail of the faulting is shown in the most perfect manner, and the general tint of the slate is also reproduced. The specimen was purchased at the village of Rosthwaite in Borrowdale; but I was not able to learn the exact locality from which it was obtained. I have little doubt, however, that it came from the Honister quarries. Mr. De Rance tells me that similar slates occur at Tilberthwaite, near Coniston. The plate is of the natural size. The face represented is a cleavage plane, and neither the bedding nor the fault planes are at right angles to this face. The bedding planes make with it an angle of about 40°.

Yarmouth and Lowestoft have long been connected by railways, but although the Great Eastern Company had provided a choice of routes, there was no direct way. This is now in process of construction by a joint arrangement between the Great Eastern, Great Northern, and Midland Railway Companies; and the route, for the most part within a mile of the sea-coast, is from the Great Eastern Station at Lowestoft through Gunton, Hopton, Corton, and Gorleston to the Yarmouth Beach Station, a distance of a little more than nine miles.