Since the publication of Mr. Marr's numerous papers on the tarns and lakes of the English Lake District, considerable attention has been paid to the manner of formation of lake-basins in the glaciated regions of Britain; a few notes therefore on some of the lakes of North Wales may not be without interest.

The problem I have tried to solve in this paper is, whether the Mino-Owari, or great Japanese, earthquake of 1891 had any effect on the seismic activity of the surrounding regions. The effect we might anticipate would be either an increase or decreasein the frequency of shocks in those regions soon after the occurrenceof the principal earthquake—a decrease if the stress were thereby diminished over the whole district, an increase if the stress were relieved in the central area and partially transferred to those adjoining it.

The interest of this section lies in its bearing on the theoretical considerations relative to the causes that produced the extensive deposits of Bubble Drift in the South of England.

Following in the wake of that admirable institution the Boulder Committee of the British Association, whose work ought to have been done by the Geological Surveyors, we may divide the districts from which the foreign boulders (that is, boulders extraneous to the immediate district) have come to Eastern England into four, namely, Charnwood Forest, the Hills of Derbyshire, Durham and Cleveland, and lastly Norway.

In calculating the throw of a fault, it is usual to assume that the whole of the displacement due to the fault has been produced by a vertical motion—i.e. by a motion in a vertical plane at right angles to the direction or strike of the fault—and that there has been no such thing as a lateral movement of one face of the fault upon the other.

The earlier part of this paper is devoted to a short epitome of the stratigraphical evidence that the Yoredale rocks of Wensleydale are only the equivalents of the upper part of the Carboniferous Limestone, and that the so-called Yoredale Beds of South Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Derbyshire are an entirely different series, which occupy a position above the Carboniferous Limestone. After all, the important point is the palæontological evidence, which, to my mind, is absolutely conclusive.

There are now in the British Museum (Natural History Branch) several specimens of fossil Estheriæ from South America, beside those described and figured in the “Monograph of Fossil Estheriæ” (Palæontographical Society), 1862, pp. 109–111, pi. iv, figs. 8–11.

1. There are some from the same locality as those already dealt with, namely, Estheria Forbesii, Jones, from Cacheuta in the province of Mendoza, Argentine Republic.

2. Others collected by David Forbes at another place, namely, Arica, Department of Arequipa, in Southern Peru.

3. An interesting series from Brazil; partly described and illustrated in the Geological Magazine for May, 1897, pp. 195–202, PI. VIII.

Few will deny that whatever comes from the pen of Sir Henry Howorth is always interesting and original, whether the reader agrees with it or otherwise. This is especially the case when he has a theory to build up or to overturn, and in the latter case he not only tries to knock over his antagonist, but he discharges at him volleys of brilliant verbiage with the view to his utter annihilation.

The correlation of the various series of Carboniferous rocks which occur in different districts of Great Britain according to the fourfold subdivision proposed by the late Professor Phillips, has always presented great difficulties, on account of the marked changes in sequence, thickness, and lithological character which occur in districts only a few miles apart. The consideration of this difficulty was the subject of a special Sub-Committee of the International Geological Congress of 1888. The Report, however, indicated only a difference of opinion, and consisted chiefly in a series of typical sections showing the local development of Carboniferous rocks, and the schemes of classification proposed by various members of the Sub-Committee.

Certain deposits in the neighbourhood of the Seberuang Eiver, a tributary of the Kapuas in Western Borneo, were described by E. Everwijn in 1854 as containing numerous so-called “Nummulites.” Similar organisms were obtained at a later date from the same district by Dr. F. Schneider, which were examined by Dr. K. Von Fritsch and proved to belong to the genus Patellina. Two new forms were described and figured under the names of P. scutum and P. Irochus, whilst the occurrence of Patellina itself suggested to Von Fritsch. the probability of the beds in question being of Cretaceous age.

In several parts of South Africa, thick sedimentary and unfossiliferous deposits are found resting on gneisses or highly altered rocks. They are well developed in the Southern Transvaal around the towns of Johannesburg and Potchefstroom; in the Northern Transvaal in the districts of Lydenburg and De Kaap, and possibly Zoutspansberg; in Matebeleland, Bechuanaland. Griqualand West, Damaraland, and Zululand.

In former papers on the surface deposits of Eastern England. I have analyzed the conditions of their occurrence and the character of their contents in view of the current theory which makes them the products of ice during an Ice Age. I have endeavoured to show that, tested by every empirical method, they utterly fail to sustain such a conclusion;—that in every character by which we can test these beds, or their component parts, they clearly and emphatically point to some other origin and cause than that of ice; and, on the other hand, that ice such as it is known to us, either in our laboratories or in Nature's laboratory, is quite incapable of producing the results demanded from it by the champions of the Glacial School who have discussed the surface geology of Eastern England.

A Few years ago, in one of three or four papers treating of the “high-level shelly clays” of Scotland, I referred at some length to the interesting section at Clava, near Inverness, first described by Mr. Jas. Fraser, C.E., and inquired—Is it part of an old sea-shore or bottom, laid down by the sea where we now find it, and therefore proving a submergence of at least 500 feet ?

I submitted a number of facts and considerations which, I thought, tended to show that this instance at Clava cannot be received as a satisfactory proof of submergence.

Last autumn Dr. Camillo Crema, of Turin, civil engineer, favoured me with a reprint of “Addizioni agli Echinodermi del Muschelkalk di Recoaro,” a paper published on October 4, 1896, in Atti del R. 1st Veneto, ser. 7, vol. vii, pp. 854–61, with plate ii. The Echinoderms described are in the Royal Geological Museum of Turin, and were found in the Lower Muschelkalk near Rovegliana, east of Recoaro, in the Vicentin Alps; a section of the Trias in this district will be found in K. W. von Gümbel's “Geologie von Bayern,” Dritte Lieferung, p. 679, 1886. Two species are added, under the names of “Aspidura italica, n.sp.” and “Apiocrinus recubariensis, n.sp.”

Upon glancing at the map of Western Australia, the eye is at once attracted by a series of large lakes in the interior: which are further often emphasized by being coloured blue. The natural inference is, that they represent sheets of water, either fresh or salt.

The ancient Brachiopodous genus Siphonotreta is well known by its species occurring in the Ordovician and Silurian strataof Russia and Great Britain, and its peculiar pedicle opening hasbeen the subject of remark. The author is not aware that this genus has hitherto been reported from any Cambrian terrain, and, therefore, the greatest interest will attach to a form recently found in the lower beds of the St. John Group, which is nearer to Siphonotreta than to any other known genus.

I am indebted to Mr. C. S. Middlemiss, Superintendent of the Geological Survey of India, for a copy of his Memoir on the Geology of Hazara and the Black Mountain recently published. Mr. Middlemiss has embodied in his Memoir the results of an unfinished survey by Mr. A. B. Wynne, late of the Geological Survey of India, and by linking these with his own more recent work, has given us an interesting and valuable Memoir on the Geology of the Himalayan district of Hazara.