By the kindness of Mr. B. N. Peach, F.R.S.E., F.G.S., of the Geological Survey of Scotland, I have been permitted to examine a very interesting insect-remain enclosed in a light-brown nodule of Clay-Ironstone, obtained fram Kilmaurs, Ayrshire.

In February last I had the pleasure to describe three new forms of British Carboniferous Cockroaches, viz.:—

1. Etoblattina Johnsoni, H. Woodw., Coal-Measures, Coseley, near Dudley.

2. Leptoblattina exilis, H. Woodw. do. do.

3. Lithomylacris Kirkbyi, H. Woodw., U. Coal-Measures, Meithil, Fife.

Mr. S. H. Scudder, of Boston, has described no fewer than 30 species from the Coal-Measures of N. America, whilst 41 species have been described by Goldenberg, Heer, Germar, Scudder, and others from the Coal-Measures of Europe, so that this group of Orthopterous insects was perhaps almost as well represented in the Coal-period as at the present day, and nearly as widely distributed geographically.

Some time since, in the summer of 1884, Mr. Jex, a collector of fossils employed by Mr. Robert Damon, F.G.S., of Weymouth, obtained from the Lower Carboniferous Shales of Eskdale, a new and most interesting form of Merostomatous Crustacean belonging to the genus Eurypterus. It has been secured for the Geological Department of the British Museum (Natural History), and I now propose to submit a brief description of this very interesting specimen.

Few genera of Fossil Fishes contain so large a number of welldefined species aa Agassiz' widely-distributed and well-known genus Pholidophorus. Above forty species have been more or less fully described by Agassiz and subsequent authors; the geological range extending from the Rhætic to the Purbeck Beds inclusive. The group consists mainly of small or moderate-sized fishes, but few that can be termed large; and with the exception of one species (P. maximus), the generic identity of which is doubtful, it contains no fishes of magnitude.

The Gasteropoda, next to the Lamellibranchiate Mollusca, are the most varied class of organisms found in the Lias. The general elegance of their forms, and the frequent beauty of their ornamentation, make these fossils extremely attractive objects; whilst their limited vertical range gives them a by no means inconsiderable stratigraphical importance. Notwithstanding these inducements to their study, the Gasteropoda of the Lias have not received, in this country, anything like the amount of attention which has been given to the other leading classes of organisms derived from that formation. On the Continent, on the other hand, considerable progress had been made in the investigation of this interesting group of fossil mollusca more than thirty years ago.

Disk small, membranous, often indistinct, a character which separates this genus from Ophiura. Rays very long, slender, depressed, formed of circles of plates, four in each circle; the lateral plates are the largest, most prominent, and provided with long spines; the basal plates are small and spiniferous, and the dorsal smooth and without clothing. Mouth plates small and triangular. All the species known have been found in the Jurassic rocks.

The specimen to which the following description applies was found by the Rev. G. Crewdson, F.G.S., of Kendal, at the base of the cliff at Huntcliff. The block in which it lay was separated from the parent rock, and had doubtless fallen from above. The occurrence in the same slab of a portion of an arm of Ophioderma Milleri and the general character of the stone leave no doubt that it is derived from the “Star-fish” bed of the Capricornus Zone.

Paleontologists are largely indebted to Messrs. Meek and JL Worthen for their very careful researches in the Coal-Measures of Illinois, which have resultedinsuch large and valuable accessions to the fauna and flora of the Carboniferous formation. Not the least interesting of these has been the discovery of numerous organisms, which were first recognized and correctly described by themin1868 as the remains of spined Myriapods.

The first American mammal found in the Jurassic, and a large proportion of those since discovered, belong to a peculiar family which the writer has called the Dryolestidœ. It includes several genera and numerous species from America, and is likewise represented among the forms found in Europe.

The early appearance in geological time of terrestrial Arthropods _L has always been to me a subject of deep interest, and I have been fortunate in noticing several of these in the pages of this Magazine and elsewhere. The oldest insect at present recorded is the impression of an Orthopterous wing referred to the family Blattidæ:, obtained from the Silurian sandstone of Jurques, Calvados, France, about the horizon of the May Hill Sandstone (Middle Silurian). M. Charles Brongniart, its discoverer, observes that what is especially remarkable about this fossil, and which distinguishes it from all other Cockroach-wings, living or fossil, is the length of the anal vein, and the narrowness of the axillary area.

In previous publications the writer has announced the discovery of Jurassic Mammals in America, and has given brief descriptions of the more important forms brought to light. Since the last article on this subject, a large amount of new material has been secured, including representatives of several hundred individuals. The remains consist not of lower jaws alone, but of various portions of the skull, and not a few vertebræ, limb bones, and other parts of the skeleton.

Since the publication of my last notes on the Vertehrata of the Norfolk “Forest-Bed” in this Magazine, several new forms have been identified, and we are now under obligation to Mr. W. Barker and Mr. A. Savin, whose diligent search in these beds has brought to light four species not hitherto recorded; three of them are bones of Birds, and therefore especially interesting, as so few remains of this class have been determined from British Pre-Glacial deposits. I have to thank Prof. Stewart and Dr. Garson for the facilities they have afforded me on this, as on other occasions, when comparing specimens in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons; and for similar assistance at the British Museum I am indebted to Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe and Mr. Oldfield Thomas.

The Tertiary Entomostraca (Ostracoda) of England, at first treated of in a monograph for the Palæontographical Society in 1856, were revised in the Geological Magazine, 1870, pp. 155–159. The researches of G. O. Sars and G. S. Brady, elucidating the relationships of the genera and species, gave effect in a great degree to that revision; and their continued labours have further helped us.

I have read with much interest the two articles which Messrs. G. A. Boulenger and R. Lydekker have recently published in the Geological Magazine, and I should be very much obliged if you would permit me to make an addition, which appears to me useful, and which I should be glad to see published.

1. Pseudotrionyx.—1. I have remarked with satisfaction that it has been possible for the above-named naturalists to refer to P. Delheidi, a Tortoise of the London-clay. This discovery is doubly interesting, in the first place because it shows the existence of the Belgian fossil in England, in the second place, because it establishes the existence of the Bruxelliau (Middle Eocene) Chelonian in the Ypresian epoch (Lower Eocene).

Below the “Coniston Limestone Series”—if we include under this general title not only the Coniston Limestone proper, but also the “Style End Grassing Beds” of Long Sleddale and the “Dufton Shales” of the Cross Fell area—no fossiliferous beds have hitherto been detected in the Lake—district till the horizon of the Upper Skiddaw Slates (Llanvirn Series) is reached. Between these two horizons are placed the thick and varied volcanic rocks which have usually been grouped together under the name of the “ Borrowdale Series ” (the “ Green Slates and Porphyries ” of Prof. Sedgwick); though it may be taken as certain that this name covers more than one series of volcanic ejecta. Up to the present time, no strata containing fossils have been detected in connection with any of the rooks which have been included under the general title of the “ Borrowdale Series.”

The first references in any detail to the nature of the Chert in Carboniferous rocks appeared in 1878, when Messrs. Hull and Hardman published a joint paper on the subject, treating more particularly of the Chert in the Upper Carboniferous Limestone of Ireland. Prof. Hull gave a general description of the distribution and mode of occurrence of the Chert, and a detailed notice of its microscopic structure, as shown in fifteen thin sections of the rock from various localities in Ireland. Prof. Hull gave a general description of the distribution and mode of occurrence of the Chert, and a detailed notice of its microscopic structure, as shown in fifteen thin sections of the rock from various localities in Ireland. The author reached the conclusion that the Chert is essentially a pseudomorphic rock, consisting of gelatinous silica replacing limestone of organic origin, chiefly foraminiferal, crinoidal, and coralline; the replacement was believed to have taken place before the shales overlying it were deposited, whilst the limestone was in a more or less plastic condition, admitting the fine percolation of water holding silica in solution. The sea was believed to have been largely charged with silica in solution, and the chemical process was accelerated by the warm surface waters of a shallow sea. The origin of the Chert from the siliceous skeletons of Biatomaceas, Polycystinas, and the spicules of sponges is distinctly denied, and it is affirmed that it can only be considered as a secondary product due to the replacement of lime-carbonate by silica.

The present communication is the result of the examination of a considerable number of small Silurian Corals, from Wenlock and Colwall, made as long ago as 1883, and it was written with the intention of its being communicated to the Geological Society. I very much regret, however, that circumstances have arisen which render it extremely difficult, perhaps impossible, for me to place myself aga in incommunication with that body. The paper appears therefore in the pages of the Geological Magazine, a medium for publication which I hope from time to time to have recourse to.

Probably from the great preponderance of interest attaching to the Devonian rocks of North and South Devon the Culm Measure rocks, constituting the great central table land, have been to a certain extent overlooked. The attempt to subdivide them by ascertaining their different lithological characteristics, and observing to what extent these characteristics are peculiar to definite horizons, Las seldom been made. We may, infact, sum up the literature of the subject with one notable exception—the late Prof. J. Phillipsinhis “Figures and Descriptions of the Palasozoic Fossils of Cornwall, Devon, and W. Somerset”—as bearing upon the position.of the series as a whole, or calling attention to some special point of interest.

The numerous demands made upon our underground water-supply, both for sewage and sanitary as well as brewing purposes, render the subject of my paper a matter of deep and serious importance.

I shall set forth in the first place the rise and course of the livers, and in the next place the wells, especially the deep ones in the Chalk area; and I propose to show the connection between the height of the springs and the rainfall of the district.

The present writer in 1883 reviewed the history of the rocks of the Alps and the Apennines with especial reference to the geological relations of serpentine and its associates, in a paper which appeared in the first volume of the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, and is reprinted, revised and with some additions, as the tenth chapter of his volume entitled “Mineral Physiology and Physiography” (Boston, 1886). Therein he gave a somewhat detailed account of the labours in Italian geology of the late Professor Bartolomeo Gastaldi, of Turin, a list of whose publications on that subject from 1871 to 1878, so far as known to the writer, will there be found, including his letter to Quintino Sella, in 1878, on the general results of explorations made in 1877 (loc. cit., 458).

The French Geological Society last year made Finistére the object of their annual excursion, and bjr their kindness I had the great pleasure of joining the party. As Brittany is so interesting a region, already very accessible by railways, and soon to become even more so, it has occurred to me that a brief account of the excursion may be acceptable to our English geologists, and at any rate afford them an index to some localities which will well repay a visit.