The huge horned Dinosaurs, from the Cretaceous, recently described by the writer, have now been investigated with some care, and much additional light has been thrown upon their structure and affinities. A large amount of new material has been secured, including several skulls, nearly complete, as well as various portions of the skeleton.

The correspondence in the life of the Wenlock rocks of Great Britain and those probably occupying a similar horizon in New South Wales is a very marked one. At present, I wish more particularly to draw attention to the occurrence of the genus Turrilepas and Annelid jaws in the Bowning Beds of New South Wales. This series of rocks has been enthusiastically investigated by Mr. John Mitchell, who, in his capacity of Teacher of the Public School of that place for some years, had an excellent opportunity of working out the fauna of the series in question. His researches are detailed in two papers, “Notes on the Geology of Bowning,” and “The Geological Sequence of the Bowning Beds.” Both the plates of Turrilepas and the small Annelid jaws are found in the Lower Trilobite bed of this series, and are chiefly from the typical locality of Bowning Creek.

This species is represented by one cast and part of another, in red sandstone from Bucks Co., Pennsylvania, given to me not long before his death by my lamented friend, Professor Henry Carvill Lewis, F.G.S., etc., of Philadelphia.

“Transversely rhomboidal, moderately gibbose, width four times the length; sides flattened, regularly attenuating to the very acute cardinal angles; cardinal area broad, flat; mesial fold wide, defined, angular, smooth; about sixteen to eighteen slightly convex, simple, smooth ribs on each side of the mesial fold, becoming indistinct as they approach the cardinal angles, so as to leave nearly a third of the length of the sides smooth.”

The specimen here figured is a typical example of Actinostroma clathratum. In all its general characters, and particularly in the regular development of the radial pillars and the presence of small astrorhizas, it resembles the specimens from the Middle Devonian of Germany, which may be regarded as the normal form of the species. Very similar examples, however, occur in the Devonian Limestones of Devonshire. The surface of the specimen is not shown, being concealed beneath a crust of Stromatoporella Eifeliensis.

How often do we not hear old people assert that when they were young the climate was quite different; that the weather was warmer or colder, etc.; and even comparatively young people are sometimes of the same opinion. It is most natural to assume that these observers have been misled by the more intense impressions of youth, which cause, for instance, a hot summer, bringing with it more rural pleasures and open-air sports, to be engraved on the mind for life. On the other hand, should the early years be accompanied by much wet weather and storms, these years are perhaps more easily forgotten, as the monotonous and tedious life within four walls to which one is then confined does not leave that distinct impression upon the youthful mind as that of a glorious summer spent out-of-doors. However, the importance of the question and its great general interest demand an investigation of the problem ; the more so as certain scientific theories and hypotheses tend to prove that a change in the climate must necessarily take place.

In the Geological Magazine for 1884 some Mesozoic fossils, obtained from near Mount Hamilton and the Peak Station, were noticed by me with figures and descriptions where the specimens were fairly well preserved. Since then additional specimens have been procured from adjoining districts. The general character of the facies is fairly similar to that already noticed in 1884; but on the whole, perhaps, the specimens are scarcely so well preserved. Since then additional specimens have been procured from adjoining districts. The general character of the facies is fairly similar to that already noticed in 1884; but on the whole, perhaps, the specimens are scarcely so well preserved. According to the opinion of those who have had most experience, these fossils may be regarded as of “Cretaceo-Jurassic” age, though I am not aware tliat such undoubted Cretaceous forms as Ancyloceras, etc., have been discovered in the beds whence the fossils forming the subject of these notes have been derived.

Little is known of the Upper Jurassic Fish-fauna from discoveries in British Formations; and though considerable information upon the subject has already been acquired, this has been chiefly obtained from the fine Lithographic Stones of Bavaria, Würtemberg, and France. In these deposits, as is well known, fishskeletons are found in an almost complete state, with the bones remarkably well preserved; and the only obstacle to the satisfactory determination of the various elements is the extreme compression to which the fossils have been subjected and the hardness of the matrix in which they are enveloped.

Doctor Archibald Geikie was born in Edinburgh in 1835. He was educated at the Royal High School—the most famous of the many celebrated scholastic institutions of the “Modern Athens,” and at Edinburgh University. He became an Assistant on the Geological Survey of Scotland in 1855, and in 1867, when that branch of the Survey was made a separate establishment, he was appointed Director. A few years later—in 1871—he was elected to fill the Murchison Professorship of Geology and Mineralogy in the University of Edinburgh, when the chair for these subjects was founded by Sir Roderick Murchison and the Crown in that year. Subsequently he resigned these appointments, when at the beginning of 1881 he was appointed to succeed Sir Andrew C. Ramsay, as Director-General of the Geological Survey of the United Kingdom, and Director of the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street.

The Tertiary Echinoid fauna from the South-east of Australia is well known from the work of Duncan, Laube, R. Etheridge, jun., and M‘Coy. A collection made by H. P. Woodward, Esq., F.G.S., from the Tertiary beds of Willunga near Adelaide, enables several additions to be made. These are of interest as they considerably strengthen the Cretaceous facies which the fauna owes to the presence of such genera as Holaster and Micraster, and as they throw some additional light upon a genus the stability of which has long been questioned. The collection has been presented to the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) by H. Y. L. Brown, Esq., F.G.S., the Government Geologist for South Australia.

Mr. Thomas Jesson, B.A., F.G.S., of Great Houghton House, Northampton, was lately so fortunate as to discover in the Great Oolite of that county, a new and most interesting example of an Isopodous Crustacean, which, by his kindness, I am permitted to figure and record in the Geological Magazine.

A Part of the fossils described in the accompanying paper were presented to the British Museum (Natural History) by the late Mr. Edward T. Hardman, F.G.S., F.R.G.S.I, in December, 1886; having been collected by him during his exploration of the Kimberley District of Western Australia, in 1883. Some additional specimens, forming a part of this collection, have been obligingly forwarded to me by Professor Edward Hull, LL.D., F.R.S., Director of the Geological Survey of Ireland; having been found, since Mr. Hardman's death, in the Survey Office, Dublin.

I Wish to take the opportunity of recording the occurrence of the above-named Graptolites in the Skiddaw Slates of the Lake District, as they seem of exceptional interest.

The article by Prof. J. W. Spencer in the last May number of this Magazine brings together many evidences of high continental elevation of North America preceding the Pleistocene or Glacial period. Though Professor Spencer has not proceeded to interpret these observations as revealing in continental elevation the probable cause of the severely cold climate and accumulation of ice-sheets during the Glacial period, I believe that this is a legitimate conclusion, and that it strongly re-enforces the arguments long ago advanced by Lyell and Dana, and recently emphasized anew by Wallace.

In some parts of the Alps serpentine is by no means a rare rock; indeed it is commoner than some geologists (myself included) once supposed, because much that was formerly comprehended under the term ‘serpentinous schist’ now proves to be true serpentine modified by the effects of pressure.

At the last meeting of the British Association the writer briefly described a remarkable series of bones of a large unknown fish from the Oxford Clay of Peterborough, preserved in the collection of Mr. Alfred N. Leeds, of Eyebury. The name of Leedsichthys problematicus was proposed for the genus and species thus indicated; and the systematic position of the fish remained doubtful, owing to the fragmentary character of its skeleton.

In the Palæontology of the Vertebrata, so much has been accomplished on the American Continent within recent years, that any European interested in this line of research is naturally attracted to the Museums and collections across the Atlantic. Among others, the writer of the present notes has at various times been desirous of comparing certain American and Canadian discoveries with those now familiar to workers in the Old World; and this desire having lately been gratified, it may not be uninteresting to offer a few remarks on the collections of extinct Vertebrata in the New World, viewed from the standpoint of one who has had the privilege of visiting many of the corresponding collections in Europe.

Several of the tubes of this singular genus are exposed in section on the weathered (water-worn ?) surface of a piece of limestone. The tubes are of an elongate conical form, rather rapidly tapering, and straight or slightly curved, the longest about 10 lines; each contains several smaller tubes one within the other, the last of these little hollow cones being the chamber of habitation. The shell is thick, and has consequently not been crushed, two or three of the inner tubes retaining their cylindrical form, as seen in the section Fig. 1b.

In an Appendix to the Explanatory Memoir on Sheet 17 of the Map of the Geological Survey of Ireland (Dublin, 1889), I have furnished a description of the petrographical characters of the Epi-diorites of the district. Some of the facts elicited by the examination of the rocks are sufficiently interesting to deserve a wider circulation.

The origin of the Lower Trias is evidently a question of interest to the readers of the Geological Magazine. Professor Bonney, in an article, to the tone of which no exception can be taken, criticizes the view which I have ventured to put forth, and very properly supports his own. It would be impossible and a waste of paper and type for me to traverse all his statements, as in many cases my reply would amount to little more than a reproduction, in a different form perhaps, of the arguments already made use of. There are, however, one or two points on which I should like to express myself, and there are some misconceptions that require clearing up.