In previous communications, to the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE I have subjected the evidence as to the age of the Mammoth in the British Islands to criticism, and I ventured to conclude that whereever we can find the remains of the Mammoth and its contemporaries undisturbed and in situ, these remains are found under and not over or in the drift. This, so far as I know, is the case in every recorded instance where the Mammoth beds and the drift have been found superimposed upon each other. Let us now turn to the Continent and test the problem there. If we are to test it in the same way, which I take to be the only satisfactory way, namely, by evidence of superposition, we must naturally limit our survey to countries where the drift actually occurs. First, let us turn to Switzerland.

In a spirited treatise on the ‘Origin of our Animal World’ Prof. L. Rütimeyer, in the year 1867, described the geological development and distribution of the mammalia, and the relationship of the different faunas of the past with each other and with that now existing. Although, since the appearance of that masterly sketch the palæontological material has been, at least, doubled through new discoveries in Europe and more especially in North and South America, this unexpected increase has in most instances only served as a confirmation of the views which Rutimeyer advanced on more limited experience. At present, Africa forms the only great gap in our knowledge of the fossil mammalia; all the remaining parts of the world can show materials more or less abundantly, from which the course followed by the mammalia in their geological development can be traced with approximate certainty.

Some four years ago I published in this MAGAZINE an analysis of the Fullers Earth of Nuffield, Surrey. The Nuffield samples were given to me by A. Sheridan, Esq., C.E. I now wish to record the analysis of a large bed of this clay at Rhiwlas, Vrongoch, near Bala, N. Wales. The beds are about 60 feet thick, and are upon the property of E. J. Lloyd Price, Esq. In this case also, the samples were sent to me by Mr. Sheridan. The two samples A and B are of somewhat different composition. B contains considerably more silicate of alumina and less alumina than A. A would of course, from a fuller's point of view, be the better earth of the two.

The very great importance of the issues involved if we are to make any definite progress in the study of the later deposits must be my excuse for this reply to Mr. Stirrup's letter. He says that the only available material for discussing the results of the expedition of Toll and Bunge to the Siberian islands is an abstract published by Schmidt some months ago. In this he is surely mistaken.

Any geologist who, in these days, is still bold enough to affirm that the origin of Alpine Lakes generally is due to glacial erosion, must surely derive considerable comfort from a visit to the Upper Engadine; for the four lakes which adorn that valley appear, at first sight, to constitute so many typical examples of the erosive power of the ancient Inn glacier, and therefore a striking confirmation of that time-honoured theory. A closer and more extensive examination of the physiography of that exceedingly interesting district, leads, however, as in so many similar cases, to a very different, and precisely opposite conclusion.

The Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, for 1892, contains a paper by Mr. H. W. Monckton, F.G.S., embodying a useful and valuable collection of observations tending to throw additional light upon the history of the surface-changes, which have taken place in the higher parts of the London Basin in later Tertiary and Quaternary times. The theoretical views put forward in that paper have not, however, altogether the novelty which the author seems to claim for them. He is wrong in coupling my name with that of Prof. Rupert Jones as an advocate of a partial marine origin of the gravels, and so claiming novelty for the theory (p. 45) “that all the gravels in the area dealt with were formed after it had for the last time risen above the sea.” A few quotations will put this in a clear light.

In some recent articles contributed to the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, Sir Henry H. Howorth has sought to establish by a great array of authorities, both British and foreign, the pre-Glacial, or at least pre-Boulder Clay, age of the Mammoth.

Mr. G. Abbott is quite right in saying (Geol. Mag. for June, p. 275) that much work has yet to be done before we understand the formation of flints, and I would add that the work required must include observations on other siliceous concretions such as chert and cherty nodules of all kinds. It is also unquestionably important that we should, if possible, ascertain whether such concretions were formed contemporaneously with the deposits in which they are now found, or whether they are a sort of separation product formed during the consolidation of the rock after upheaval above the sea.

Mr. Charles Schuchert of Newhaven, Conn., U.S.A., has recently published in the “American Geologist” (Vol. xi.No. 3) an important and highly suggestive “Classification of the Brachiopoda,” based on the history of the class (Chronogenesis) and the ontogeny of the individual. It embodies the latest results of the remarkable investigations on the Palaeozoic forms of Prof. James Hall and Mr. J. M. Clarke, who have thrown so much light on the evolution of genera among the Brachiopoda in the eighth volume of “The Palæontology of New York” (Part I. Brachiopoda, 1892).

The series of slates, schists, and grits, of the Isle of Man, which are regarded as identical with the Skiddaw Slates of the Lake District, have hitherto yielded no traces of fossils, if we except the rare worm-like markings known as Palasochorda. The writer during the month of August last, took the opportunity of a visit to the island (in connection with the geological mapping by Professor Dawkins) to search very closely the least altered slates of the series along their northern outcrop.

It has been supposed, though I do not know who was the first to suggest it, that the total amounts of silica existing in the Chalk with flints and the Chalk without flints respectively are very nearly equal: the idea being that if the quantity of silica disseminated through the flintless Chalk could be accurately estimated it would be found to be nearly or quite as great as the amount existing in the shape of flints in an equal thickness of flinty Chalk.

Proceeding on this assumption it seems also to have been inferred that silica was originally disseminated through the mass of the Upper Chalk, and that this silica has in some mysterious way been concentrated into nodules and layers of flint, leaving the surrounding Chalk in the condition of a nearly pure calcareous material.

In the “Catalogue of Type Fossils in the Woodwardian Museum, Cambridge”, an account was given of all the types and described specimens known to be in the Museum at the end of November, 1891. The work is here continued to December 31st, 1892. The additions given consist of (1) Types presented during the year 1892; (2) Specimens described during the year; (3) Specimens which were in the Museum at the time of publication of the Catalogue but which were not then known to be types.

On the morning of December 20, 1892, a severe earthquake was felt in the neighbourhood of Quetta in British Balúchistan. Some of the remarkable effects of this shock have already been described in a paper in “Engineering” for May 19, by Mr. R. W. Egerton, the executive engineer in charge of the Shalabagh division of the North-Western Railway. The present note is founded partly on this paper, and partly on further details contained in letters written by Mr. Egerton to his father, Sir. R. E. Egerton, K.C.I.E. and to myself. It will thus be seen that everything that is of value in this paper is due to Mr. Egerton's careful observations; my own part has simply been to edit these notes and to select from them, those particulars which appear to me of most interest to geologists.

The Pliocene mammalian land fauna lived at a period when Europe had already obtained the main features of its present configuration. Italy, to be sure, at the beginning of this period was still partly overflowed by the sea, and in Belgium, Holland, and the South of England, the North Sea extended further over the land than to-day and left behind the deposits known as the Crag. Over the extended mainland of Central Europe, the conditions for the preservation of mammals were, on account of the absence of more extended fresh-water lakes, extremely unfavourable. Only the volcanic tuffs in Auvergne, the fissures filled with Bohnerz of the Upper Rhone valley, and the scattered fresh-water deposits of the Rhone valley, Roussillon and the neighbourhood of Montpellier, contain remains of the Pliocene land fauna, which are handed down in greater perfection in the swampy, and in part coal-bearing, sediments of the Arno valley and in the partly marine formations of Piedmont and the Romagna.

At the meeting of the Geological Society on February 8th, Mr. Teall exhibited, as one of the illustrations of his paper “On some Coast-Sections at the Lizard,” an eminently characteristic and instructive diagram of serpentine and granite in juxtaposition; and the interesting question whether the granite was intrusive in the serpentine or vice versa, was ventilated and discussed, but by no means decided.

I am highly gratified that some of the difficult problems connected with the Mammoth and its surroundings, which have been too long ignored, are at last attracting something like adequate attention; and I regret that Mr. Jukes-Browne should withdraw from the controversy without, as it seems to me, doing justice to the cause he represents. In his concluding letter he adds nothing but a reference fo Mr. Clement Eeid and Mr. Horace B. Woodward, neither of whom need a vicarious spokesman. I wish he had been able to point to one well attested example to prove his case. I must again press upon him the fact that mere rhetoric is of no avail in this or any other scientific discussion. What we need is to be pointed to some example within our four seas of the occurrence of a land-surface dating from the Mammoth period underlaid by true drift.

When one refers back to such a paper as that by Babbage on the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli, one feels humiliated by the little advance which has been made in certain branches of dynamical geology within the last sixty years. That paper contains a full and elaborate account of the plan and history of the Temple and of the remarkable changes of level which its site has undergone gone; and the author speculates among other causes upon the expansion and contraction of the underlying rocks, owing to changes of temperature arising from its being situated in a volcanic district, and he is thence led to speculate on the larger question of the depression and elevation of regions of the earth's surface through the fall and rise of the isogeotherms, caused by denudation and deposition respectively.

Though the observations described in this note are not conclusive, they seem to me to show that the lake of Geneva is probably growing at the present time, and that a similar growth, if taking place beneath an ice-covering on nearly level ground, would in time produce a true rock-basin. Unfortunately, the instruments used were very delicate levels, and experiments with such instruments prove that they are not to be trusted entirely for measurements of very small angles continued over a long interval of time.

In the Burrow Collection of fossils from the Carboniferous Limestone of the neighbourhood of Settle I have recently found a form of the genus Cyclus which seems to deserve notice. From a careful comparison with the figures and description of C. Harhiessi (Woodw.)inDr. Woodward's Monograph on Fossil Crustacea, to which we owe the greater part of our knowledge of the genus, I should consider it to be a new form allied to that species.