Although it is now nearly twelve years since I left India, my interest has not abated in the scenes and subjects of former labours in that country, and I am still careful to note anything which is published in reference to them. This practice enabled me to add some facts to the history of the two above-named volcanoes in my Second Notice, besides quoting from the account by Mr. F. R. Mallet, the principal results of his survey made in conjunction with Captain Hobday, eleven years after my visit to them, which took place in the year 1873.

The hill of the Great Doward rises above the right bank of the river Wye to the N.W. of the well-known limestone escarpment of Symonds Yat. The section of the Great Doward, geologically considered, is best seen by ascending the hill from theMonmouth road, a quarter of a mile from the village of Whitchurch. The basement beds consist of Upper Old Red Sandstone, which thins out considerably in its Southern strike from the Brecon Vans; and we pass upwards over the Old Red Conglomerate, and the Passage beds of the Upper Yellow Sandstones, while the hill itself is capped by the Lower Limestone shale and the Carboniferous Limestone.

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 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.

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.

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.

In this paper no new theory is offered as to the formation of those rocks, found in so many places in the Tropics, known as laterites and lateritoids. Rather is it offered as confirmatory evidence of the hypothesis, which has been put forward by several writers (5), that in general they are formed by the evaporation of iron-bearing waters as they are brought to the surface by one or more causes, such as capillarity and hydrostatic pressure. The part that animal life may play in the deposition of the iron, as well as in the solution of it, does not appear, however, to have been noted (5).

In no part of Europe, probably, can we find such striking examples of the effects which may be produced by single paroxysmal outbursts of volcanic force, as in the band of igneous rocks which stretches through nearly the whole length of the Italian peninsula, on the western side of, and parallel to the chain of the Apennines. Etna and many of the extinct volcanos of this continent constitute, it is true, mountains of vaster bulk than any in the district to which we have referred; but while the former were evidently built up by the accumulation of the products of igneous forces operating during long periods from the same centres, and with comparatively moderate violence, the enormous craters of the latter bear witness to the occurrence of single outbursts of these forces of far greater intensity.

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.

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.

Syrabia, to use Krenkel's comprehensive term for the great region comprising Arabia, Syria, Palestine, and Sinai, has been the theatre of vast igneous activity from the Cretaceous to the present time. M. Blanckenhorn divides the igneous rocks of this region into two groups, according to age, as Cretaceous-Eocene and Neogene-Quaternary. The Cretaceous-Eocene group includes gabbro-serpentine-diabase intrusives and extrusives involved with, and restricted to, the Eurasian fold-mountain system in the northern part of the region, and also prevailingly basaltic eruptives occurring in the Syrabian plateau country.

Sir Charles Lyell in his Principles of Geology, published in 1834, remarks upon the accumulating proofs that the climate of the earth had undergone great changes in the past, and he endeavoured to show that these changes might have been produced by the varying distribution of sea and land. He says, “But if, instead of vague conjectures as to what might have been the state of the planet at the era of its creation, we fix our thoughts steadily on the connexion at present between climate and the distribution of land and sea; and if we then consider what influence former fluctuations in the physical geography of the earth must have had on superficial temperature, we may perhaps approximate to a true theory.”