It has been for some time a matter of surprise to me that Dr. Holl, in his exhaustive memoir “On the Rocks of S. Devon and East Cornwall,”—after once raising the question “whether the limestones” (those of our present subject) “might or might not be the same as those of Ogwell, Ipplepen, and Dartington thrown over a broad anticlinal axis of the lower slates to the North-West,”1— should have ceased following out that line of thought to what appears to me the only possible issue, since he thoroughly recognized the existence of uniclinal structures in parts of the district.

Professor Sir Edgeworth David was born in 1858 at St. Fagan's Rectory, near Cardiff, and was educated at Magdalen College School, Oxford, becoming head of the school and captain of the football and boat clubs. In 1876 he was elected to the Senior Classical Scholarship at New College, Oxford, and graduated in 1880, having won further distinctions in classics and in athletics. He had included in his studies a course of geology under Professor Prestwich, and had commenced in South Wales his life-long research upon the problems of glaciation. His geological studies were continued in London under Professor Judd, at the Royal School of Mines, and in 1882 he was appointed to the Geological Survey of New South Wales, under the late Mr. C. S. Wilkinson. On his arrival in Sydney in November of that year he made an investigation of the very fossiliferous Silurian beds of Yass, and shortly afterwards commenced the study of the rich tin-bearing deep-leads and alluvium of New England, completing a large quarto memoir thereon in 1887. His duties led him to visit many pirts of the State, but attention was now devoted chiefly to the Survey of the Hunter River Coalfield, which has occupied much of his time ever since; indeed, part only of his researches thereon has yet appeared. This investigation has been of immense value both economically and scientifically. The western portion, or Maitland coalfield, the extension of which was discovered during his survey, has proved the most important coalfield in Australasia.

The “bluestone” which is found in the central parts of some of the concretions associated with the large spiral bodies described by Mr. B. B. Woodward is found, on microscopical examination, to be a calcareous sandstone. Sabangular grains of quartz, averaging 0·04 mm. in diameter, constitute over 50 per cent of the rock, and are set in a cement of carbonates which have crystallized in plates very much as in the Fontainebleau sandstone. These plates are sometimes 3 cm. across, and give a characteristic lustre to the stone. The quartz-grains are evenly distributed through the plates of crystalline carbonate, and are so closely packed as to be almost in contact. It is easy to imagine that with the complete removal of the carbonates by solution there would remain a friable sandstone, very porous, but still occupying almost the same volume as the bluestone.

With few exceptions, surface dislocations within the earth's crust or ‘earthquake-faults,’ have been described in connection with all earthquakes of large proportions. The Charleston earthquake of August 31st, 1886, stands out in some contrast with most others in this particular, and it is further in contrast with some other earthquakes for the reason that the phenomena recorded in connection with it have not as yet been brought into any relation with the structural geology of the district. A partial explanation of this may perhaps be found in the fact that the area most disturbed—the so-called ‘epicentral tract’—is entirely included within the coastal plain of the South-Eastern United States. Upon this plain the basement of rock is covered to very considerable depths by unconsolidated material, and it would perhaps be too much to expect that displacements upon fracture planes in the rock would be revealed in full measure at the surface.

The Lower Greensand forms a well-wooded range of hills in Kent and Surrey which is known in Kent as the Ragstone Range. Between Ashford and Leith Hill this range is broken by the consequent streams of the Stour, Medway, and Mole, and by the obsequent streams of the Shode, Oxted Brook, and that part of the Eden known as Gibb's Brook.

In a Tertiary ring complex at Carlingford, Eire, a large mass of eucrite is cut by porphyritic cone-sheets. A major granophyre intrusion later than the cone-sheets alters the clinopyroxene of the sheets to hornblende whilst the clinopyroxene of the adjacent eucrite remains unaltered. By elimination of several possibilities it is shown that the different behaviour of the two pyroxenes reflects their thermal stabilities.

It is argued that the two pyroxenes represent a pyroxene trend of crystallization and that thermal metamorphism attacked them in the reverse order of their magmatic crystallization. Importance is attached to extensive replacement of Ca′ by Fe′ in the cone-sheet pyroxene as a factor of instability.

No fact in Physical Geology is more frequently recorded than a simultaneous occurrence of subsidence of the earth’s crust where deposition of sedimentary strata has been in progress. Reference is often made to the fact that the basement beds of different sedimentary formations were deposited in shallow water, and to the indications presented by subsequent deposits that they were accumulated in a sea of moderate depth. On them immense accumulations may have been deposited in successive strata, amounting even to miles in thickness; showing that with the deposition there has been a corresponding depression of the original surface. Though these phenomena are so inseparable in their occurrence and so well known, English geologists, until the last few months, have made little, it may even be said no endeavour, to determine whether they should be associated as cause and effect. This has not been the case with American geologists.

In the course of my work in the deserts of the Fayûm during the last two years I found that over a certain area to the north of the eastern end of the Birket el Qurun lake flint implements, many of very fine workmanship, were of frequent occurrence. The accompanying Plates illustrate the common and most perfect types (reduced to about one-third).

The specimen (Fig. 6), kindly entrusted to me for description by Mr. Howard Fox, consists of the oral skeleton surrounded by portions of the disc and of portions of the five rays, all seen from what is believed to be the ventral or actinal surface, and lying on a fragment of the dark slate of the locality, Epphaven. The skeletal parts being preserved in pyrites, it has proved possible to develop the specimen slightly by washing with weak hydrofluoric acid and then brushing with a soft brush. The specimen is, however, so minute and delicate that this process could not be carried very far.

It is just a score of years since the unstalked crinoid Uintacrinus was discovered, almost simultaneously, in the Niobrara Chalk of Kansas and the Lower Senonian of Westphalia. The American specimens were described by Grinnell and Meek, while the single European specimen was exhaustively discussed by Schlueter. Of recent years further specimens, in a better state of preservation, have been found in Kansas, and a slab purchased by the British Museum enabled me to make a more detailed study, the results of which were published in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society (vol. 1893, pp. 974–1004, pls. liv–lvi, April, 1896). But as to the occurrence of Uintacrinus in Europe, our knowledge at the beginning of 1896 remained as in 1876; not even from Reckling-hausen, the original Westphalian locality, had another fragment been obtained. It may therefore be a surprise to many to learn that Uintacrinus is one of the commonest fossils of the Marsupites zone, not only in the Marlstone of Westphalia, but in the Chalk of our own island, and probably at the same horizon in a good many other countries.

The record by Dr. Rastall (1) of new types of brookite from the Dogger of North-East Yorkshire prompts a note on the brookite of the Millstone Grit of West and South-West Yorkshire, since the brookite of this latter formation presents interesting features somewhat different from those presented by the brookite of the Dogger.

The sequence of Upper Carboniferous rocks in the outlier at the western end of Stainmore Pass is described. The Upper Yoredale Series is shown to be separated by an unconformity from the overlying “Millstone Grit” series. The Coal Measures are about 800 feet thick and appear to be unconformable on the “Millstone Grit”. Hitherto unrecorded non-marine faunas and floras indicate horizons near the base and at the top of the Modiolaris zone. The sequence of Upper Carboniferous rocks at Stainmore is briefly compared with those of surrounding coalfields.

The fossil which forms the subject of this note was thought, when first found by me, to be a new genus of Tabulate corals. Since it may puzzle, and indeed has puzzled, others in a similar manner, it will perhaps prove useful to describe it.

This communication is the outcome of work carried out during the years 1895–1901 in the service of the Geological Survey of Scotland. Although this systematic work has been confined to the Isle of Skye, information incidentally acquired, and the published literature of the British Tertiary rocks, indicate for the conclusions arrived at a much wider application. In this place the results must be set down without the detailed observations upon which they are based.