The rapid exploration of the Kent Coal-field during the last few years has considerably increased our knowledge of the very interesting Upper Carboniferous floras there developed. In a previous paper I described the plants obtained from the Waldershare and Fredville borings, and I hope before long to publish further accounts of the floras derived from several other borings. In the present note I wish to draw attention to the discovery of two fossils in Kent which appear to me to be of exceptional interest.

During the last six years the sea has continued to encroach on a part of the Norfolk coast, near Trimingham, which has been the subject of much controversy. Our last visit (prior to this year) was in April, 1906, when the most noted of the chalk masses had been reduced to an arch with one pier of chalk and the other of boulderclay. That was described (with a diagram), and another account, with a photographic illustration, was given in the same volume by the late Mr. W. H. Hudleston, who apparently had not seen our paper.

It falls to the lot of only a very few able men to take up some neglected branch of science, and by their genius, their energetic work, the discoveries they make, assisted by their personal charm and bonhomie, to be able to attract general attention to their researches, and so attain a great public success, filling with interest and enthusiasm the intelligent, and attracting even the veriest tyro within the circle of their investigation. Such has been the outcome of the life-work of our friend and associate of many years, Professor John Milne, whose untiring energy in the study of Seismology has obtained for it now a foremost place in the physical sciences as having most important bearings on the economy of the globe and the very existence of our race.

Through the kindness of Dr. Flett there has come into my hands an interesting boulder of nepheline-syenite belonging to Sir John Murray, dredged during the expedition of the Michael Sars(1) from the Atlantic Rise at a depth of 1,750 fathoms at a place about 150 miles south-west of the south-western corner of Ireland (Station 95 of the Reports of the Michael Sars Expedition). The slices examined were slides Nos. F 2092 to F 2095 from the Geological Survey Collection and two belonging to Dr. Peach. It is a boulder of remarkable freshness, and so entirely unlike any other specimen as yet recorded from the floor of the Atlantic that the question of its origin is of some interest. The fact that no other fragments of the same type were obtained in this dredging militates against the view that it is part of a mass in situ on the sea-bottom. Its companions from the same station, and in fact all the specimens collected by the Michael Sars, have been recognized by Dr. Peach and Dr. Flett as similar to rocks occurring commonly in Ireland, the North-West Highlands, and the Southern Uplands of Scotland, and not one among them is closely related to the nepheline-syenite. Bocks of Irish types have also been described by Professor Cole and Mr. Crook (2) as a result of earlier dredgings of the Atlantic floor, and again no specimen has been found remotely resembling the subject of this paper.

In the course of my researches among British Dinosaurs the kindness of Dr. J. E. Marr and Professor T. McKenny Hughes has enabled me to investigate closely the fragmentary bone which Professor Seeley described in 1874 under the new generic name of Craterosaurus. Although the systematic position of the specimen had remained problematical from the day of its discovery, nevertheless the hope was entertained that in consequence of our present more ample knowledge of Dinosaurs and fossil reptiles in general, it might now be possible to determine the exact nature of this apparently most interesting fossil. The result was rather unexpected, for it became clear that what Seeley supposed to be the base of a cranium was nothing else than the neural arch of a dorsal vertebra showing the greatest resemblance to the corresponding element in Stegosaurus.

As already mentioned in this Magazine (September, 1911), the Swedish geologist, Professor Alfred Elis Törnebohm, died on April 21, 1911, at the age of 72.

Of the varied Echinoid fauna from the well-known ‘Sponge-gravels’ of Faringdon, Berkshire, there are no constituent forms of which the remains are more abundant than those of Cidaris. It is no exaggeration to say that every handful of the ‘gravel’ will include many fragments of radioles, and some portions of test, which can he ascribed to that comprehensive genus.

As above stated, the arrangement of the pits on the lower surface of the fringe is not invariably the same as that on the upper surface, and we may now examine the degree of correspondence or difference in the better-known British species.

One of D'Orbigny's subsidiary methods of classification was to create separate genera for those species which heap layer upon layer of zoœcia by prefixing ‘Mult’ or ‘Multi’ to the name of the genus to which they would but for this habit of growth be referred. It is rather surprising that he did not have occasion to create a genus Multeschara, as there are two species in the English Chalk which he could only have dealt with in this way. They are of interest in their bearing on the question of the admissibility of methods of growth in classifying the Cheilostomata, as they are linked together by a most adventitious peculiarity in growth and one which does not involve any zoœcial modification. They offer therefore a case in which, if those who will not allow to zoarial growth and measure of classificatory value are right, it might be anticipated that species so linked together would be a heterogeneous assembly and not even consistent in this habit of growth. Such an anticipation would hardly be borne out in the case of the English Chalk. The Multescharine habit is practically confined to the two following species, which are most distinctly homogeneous, and neither of which, as far as my experience goes, ever adopts any other mode of growth (except for occasional specimens of Rhagasostoma palpigerum of purely Escharine habit, which may fairly be regarded as cut off prematurely in the Escharine stage, through which every ‘Multeschara’ must pass).

Zoarium always adherent, rarely large.

Zoæcia pyriform when not crowded, small, the earlier forms larger than the later, but individually very variable; area sub-triangular; a slight internal front wall, occasionally surrounded by a faint line; under the oæcia the rim is very thin, very low, and set distinctly back from the general curve.

Having read with great interest Mr. E. E. L. Dixon's remarks on the Radiolarian cherts of Gower in the November number of the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, I am tempted to offer some notes on the occurrence of similar rocks in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago, where Radiolaria-bearing rocks are known to be widespread.

If we review the progress of any one of the natural sciences we shall find it is but the outcome of the genius and labours of many individual workers, who have devoted themselves for years to some particular branch of discovery or research. Taking palæobotany as an illustration, we may cite the name of William Carruthers as a striking example of an individual worker in that field, who, during more than a quarter of a century, specially devoted himself to the investigation and description of fossil plants, and has thus added largely to a knowledge of this section of the science of palæontology.

Zoarium always encrusting, with a very strong tendency to linear and in particular transversely linear arrangement, the great regularity of occurrence and the smallness of the avicularia being unsuited to the quincuncial arrangement usual among the Escharidæ.

Mr. Bullen Newton has recently determined the fossils found by my students and myself in the Alexandria Beds near Port Elizabeth to be of Mio-Pliocene age; the full memoir will shortly be published in the Records of the Albany Museum, Grahamstown. Hitherto the Alexandria Beds have been regarded as Danian on the strength of the evidence afforded by the Polyzoa and casts of Lamellibranchs, but the well-preserved shells on which Mr. Newton founds his determination of the age of the beds leave no doubt but that this earlier one is wrong. If the beds had been Danian there should be some connexion between these and the Pondoland Cretaceous in regard to the conditions of their deposition, which there is not. In trying to clear the way for a better conception I endeavoured to show that as the affinities of the Pondoland fossils lay with Cenomanian forms from Tunis, the age of the Pondoland Beds was towards the lower half of the Upper Cretaceous; then the supposed Cretaceous beds of Alexandria with. Tertiary sharks’ teeth would represent transition beds between the Cretaceous and Eocene. Dr. Kitchin, however, objected to this, as the Pondoland fauna taken as a whole was Turonian, if not Senonian, and the gap between the Pondoland and the Alexandria Beds became so small that there was not time for the undoubted changes in the land to have taken place which would have allowed the deposition of these several formations in the positions we now find them.

Thanks to the descriptions published by visiting mining engineers and the more detailed work of the Geological Survey of the State, the general geological features of those parts of Western Australia in which mining is carried on are now well known. A surprising degree of uniformity of geological structure and mode of gold occurrence is revealed over an extent of country unparalleled elsewhere in the world. And yet it is safe to assume that to the casual reader who has not visited the country the above publications present little else than a mass of bewildering detail.

“For reasons which can be readily understood, geological inquiry in Western Australia has up to the present consisted chiefly of a series of unconnected observations to the co-ordination of which we must look to the future.”

2. The Downton Castle or Yellow Sandstones (see Figs. 2 and 3).— These occur at Lye and Turners Hill, but the best sections are at Saltwells. There the lowest beds are 10 feet of brown yellow and blue soft sandy mudstones (see Fig. 2, Ea), seen resting on the Ludlow Bone-bed, north of the Tram Bridge. Like the same zone at Ludlow, they are practically unfossiliferous.

In view of the attention lately devoted by geological workers to the British Lower Carboniferous rocks and their fossils, an exhibit has been arranged in the Department of Geology at the Natural History Museum to illustrate the occurrence in the field of Corals in reference to the division of the Lower Carboniferous rocks into zones.

8. Arenaceous Strata unconformable on an Oil-generating Formation.—Occasionally a formation, though a parent source of petroleum, does not contain porous rocks suitable for oil accumulation. But a second formation resting unconformably upon the first may be admirably situated for receiving and storing the oil, for this second formation probably contains the necessary sandstones, and also all the unconformable strata are likely to be more or less arpaeeous where they abut against the plane of unconformity, thus facilitating the transfer of the oil from the rocks below (Fig. 9). Cases of this kind occur in California in the Coalinga Oilfield, where oil is obtained from sandstones in the Miocene which lies unconformably over the Eocene; also in Roumania, where the Meotic formation transgresses over the Saliferous.

In 1866 Salter established this species on the basis of two somewhat distorted pygidia, but the head-shield and thorax have remained undescribed and apparently unknown. The discovery therefore by Mr. V. M. Turnbull of some complete though somewhat imperfectly preserved individuals in the Arenig Beds near Haverfordwest is of not a little interest; and with the aid of several detached head-shields, in addition to those belonging to individuals with typical pygidia, we are able to give a fairly complete description of the species, which, owing to its relations to other genera, is particularly worthy of note.

Previous Authorities.—The most important work dealing with my subject is that by Mr. Thomas Codrington “On the Superficial Deposits of the South of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight”. In this elaborate essay, which includes all the area with which I propose to deal, the author describes the gravel terraces on both sides of the Solent, including the New Forest, showing how they were originally distributed over surfaces gradually sloping downwards on both sides towards the margin of the sea-coast from a height of about 420 feet on either hand. In the author's view, the plateau gravel beds were spread as sheets over sloping surfaces, themselves intersected by river-valleys which were widened and deepened at a subsequent period after the deposition of the beds of gravel, so as to leave abrupt faces and cliffs exposing sections of the strata. The paper, which is illustrated by sections, leaves nothing to be desired for completeness; but in order to account for the deposition of the gravel-beds he propounds a theory which I am unable to accept.