Growth and variation in a single species from a thin bed at one locality are examined statistically. The different dimensions are shown to be allometrically related both to each other and to the volume of the shell. It is argued that total width is the best measure of age of the individual and it is shown that at a certain width there is a break in the continuity of growth of the length and thickness.

Southern Israel is traversed by a series of north-easterly trending anticlines, the largest of which is the Raman anticline. Here a deep erosion-cirque exposes a sedimentary succession from the Cenomanian down to the Triassic, including a series of magmatic rocks of highly alkaline affinities. The forms of these magmatic bodies are described in detail and from their field-relationships with the sediments it is shown that they include a stock, a laccolith, sills, dykes, and a basaltic flow. This igneous activity took place between Lower Triassic and Upper Jurassic times and was perhaps restricted only to the Jurassic. Comparison with the surrounding areas leads to the conclusion that the Raman region was the centre of magmatic activity during this period.

Kinematic analysis of tension gashes in an exposure of the Moine Series indicates that the fractures resulted from a tectonic movement directed from north to south, unrelated to that responsible for the nearby Caledonian Moine Thrust.

A description is given of structural imperfections such as twinning, lineage sutures and optical streaks, in Alpine quartz crystals.

Specimens of Diversograptus are described which show conclusively how the two stipes arise from the sicula. This is also the first record of the genus occurring in Britain

The name hanléite is proposed for a magnesia-chrome garnet from Hanlé, Rupshu, Kashmir.

Certain amygdaloidal rocks in Skye have formerly been interpreted as lavas in which the matrix of the amygdales has been replaced by, or alternatively metamorphosed into, material such as one expects in intrusions. It is now claimed that the amygdales formed in intrusions in normal fashion

The view is put forward that, as any subdivisions of an evolving plexus must be arbitrary, the existing binomial system of nomenclature should continue to be applied to morphological species in palaeontology, rather than be replaced by any other arbitrary system which could not be applied generally.

The suggestion that the Skye amygdaloidal gabbro represents amygdaloidal basaltic lava in which the grain-size has been coarsened by recrystallization does not imply “an unusual type of metamorphism” as Bailey supposes. Whereas recent lava-flows are fine-grained, older flows, particularly pre-historic examples, commonly have a doleritic or gabbroic grain-Size. Bore-hole investigations in Yellowstone Park indicate that such increase in grain-size is a consequence of the long-continued through-passage of gases and water escaping to the surface. Bailey's own observation that amygdales within the Skye amygdaloidal gabbro “interrupt the form of the bigger feldspars” provides evidence that the bigger feldspars are younger than the amygdales, and that the rocks containing them have therefore recrystallized

Though good examples of plunging cliffs surviving as such are now rare, this form of shoreline was probably commoner in the initial stages of the current (postglacial) cycle of marine erosion. Most cliffs now bordering the sea, whether developed from initially plunging cliffs or not, have already receded some distance from the initial shoreline.

As plunging cliffs may, because of reflection of waves from them, enjoy some immunity from direct frontal attack, the headlands which they truncate may be more vulnerable to marine erosion on the flanks, where the slopes partially submerged by shift of ocean level are less steep. Flank attack may lead to resection of the headland in such a way that eventually it will again end distally in a straight line of cliff; but at an intermediate stage of this resection cycle the terminations of headlands are characteristically scalloped, while at a penultimate stage of resection the salient of submaturity may be reduced to a row of stacks, the “needles” stage