In the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural History’ for October, 1853 (2 ser. vol. xii. p. 272), there appeared a short memoir on the Lias at Fretherne (Gloucestershire) by the Rev. P. B. Brodie, and to it is appended a Note by Mr. T. Rupert Jones relative to certain Foraminifera which had been obtained from that formation. One of these Foraminifera, an organism of some interest and importance in a palæontological point of view, was partillay described by Proffessor Jones in the Note alluded to, with the provisional name Nummulites liassicus. The general from of the sheel is similar to that of the Nummutlite, though its average size is somewhat less than even the smaller fossil varieties of that genus; and the way in which the specimens are crowded together in some portions of the strata, as though the rock was almost composed of them, may have suggested by its appearance an analogy to the Nummulites in the Nummulitic limestone.

The specimens which form the subject of the present note were brought to England by Mr. H. T. Burls, A.R.S.M., F.G.S., late Geologist to Rajah Brooke, of Borneo.

It was Mr. Burls's intention to communicate to the Geological Magazine the results of his observations in North Borneo, and in this connection I undertook the examination of the limestone with a view to obtaining evidence as to its age. On his departure for South Africa, Mr. Burls left the specimens at the Science Schools, asking me to make what I could out of them without stratigraphical details.

The proof which I gave in June, 1891, of the production of “rich phosphate” by enrichment of phosphatic chalk through the influence of the Tertiary deposit called “bief,” enabled us to foresee the existence of similar rich phosphate in the London Basin; since phosphatic chalk, analogous to that which I had described or discovered in Picardy, especially at Hardivilliers and Hallencourt, had been discovered by Mr. Strahan and described by him in an interesting paper “On a Phosphatic Chalk with Belemnitella quadrata.”

The theory of a Cretaceo-Tertiary succession in New Zealand was first formulated by Captain Hutton in the early seventies mainly on the evidence of the Waipara sections in North Canterbury, where there appeared to be an unbroken succession from the Cretaceous into the Lower Tertiary. He correlated the Weka Pass Stone with the Ototara Stone, and in the main his views were adopted by Sir James Hector and the Geological Survey.

There has recently been presented1 to the British Museum collection an Ammonite from the Gault of Folkestone that seems to be worthy of a short note. It is represented in the accompanying figures. At first sight it appears to be a new species. The shell is nearly complete and exceedingly well preserved; there has evidently been another half whorl to the specimen (see Fig. a), but this, which apparently constituted the body-chamber, has been broken away, leaving at the anterior end of the specimen the surface of the last septum.

The district known as Cannock Chase is, at the present moment, the scene of a series of extensive mining operations which, if even moderately successful, will open up a very considerable area of valuable coal-seams, computed at not less than 200,000,000 tons, and push outwards a distance of upwards of five miles the northern apex of the South Staffordshire Coal-field. This apex, as is well known, now rests on Brereton, where the Coal-measures are thrown down on the east by a fault of considerable range and influence, and on the west they are overlapped unconformably by Bunter conglomerates. From this point the conglomerates are continued in a broad unbroken tract, over the Chase to within about four miles of the town of Stafford, up to which point the mining investigations, to which I have alluded, will be extended.

We now enter upon the third and concluding term of Linnarsson's geological career. This extended from the commencement of the year 1876 to the date of his untimely death in September, 1881. Hitherto, he had been occupied mainly in the development of the grander natural divisions of the Lower Palæozoic Succession of Sweden. This final period was devoted to the task of elaborating their minor subdivisions and best-characterized zones of life.

The specimen herein to be considered is one of great historical interest, for it was the first specimen of an Edrioasteroid made known to science. It was discovered by Dr. J. J. Bigsby in limestone now recognised as of Lower Trenton age, forming Table Rock at the Chaudière Falls on the Ottawa River at Ottawa (then called Bytown). Canada, in 1822. Brought by Bigsby to England, it was figured and described, though not named, by G. B. Sowerby in 1825. E. Forbes, who had the speciman for study, referred to it in his memoir “On the Cystideæ of the Silurian Rocks of the British Islands,” since the “aspect” of his Agelacrinites Buchianus “immediately called [it] to mind”; he even went so far as to say that there could “be no question … of its being generically allied” to that species. Considering the not unnatural inadequacy of Sowerby's description and figure, the reputation that Forbes had as an authority on echinoderms, and the comparative imperfection of the first found specimens of Edrioaster, it was not surprising that E. Billings in 1856 should have supposed a new Trenton fossil, undoubtedly congeneric with Agelacrinites Buchianus, to be of the same species as that found by Bigsby and should therefore have applied to it the trivial name ‘Bigsbyi,’ while giving to a fossil of obviously different structure the name ‘Agelacrinites Dicksoni.’ In February, 1858, Billings travelled to London with the fossils in question, and found that Bigsby's specimen was not, after all, the same as his Cyclaster Bigsbyi, but was specifically identical with his A. Dicksoni. He redescribed the species, and had his type-specimen, as well as Bigsby's fossil, figured by C.R. Bone.

I Quite agree with Mr. Goodchild's statement in the July Number of the Geol. Mag. that the stratigraphy of some of the areas in which the Coniston Limestone Series is developed “presents very considerable difficulties,” so much so that in the areas of Cross Fell and Settle portions of the “country might be described as consisting of a gigantic fault-breccia,” and that it is necessary “to go over a large part of this faulted area again and again” in order to interpret its structure. I do not know whether Mr. Goodchild would class me amongst the “less fortunate” ones who have not been over the ground again and again; possibly I have not devoted the amount of time which he has been able to give to the study of the rocks of the Cross Fell Inlier, but it must be remembered that Prof. Nicholson, with whom I had the pleasure of working at this inlier, has returned to the ground again and again during a long course of years, whilst more recently, he and I have devoted several vacations to its study, and we have carefully compared the beds and their fossils with those of adjoining and more distant areas.

At the end of his monograph on the structure of Calamites, Prof. Williamson makes the following remark: —“I am disposed to regard all existing specific names and definitions as worthless. They separate things that I believe to be identical, and confound others that are obviously distinct.” The specimen described below affords an interesting example in support of this view.