A developmental sequence of Membraniporellæ showing progressive subordination of the ribbed front wall to a solid secondary front wall can be traced fairly directly from Membraniporella pustulosa, Bryd., which is prevalent in the zone of M. cor-anguinum and the Uintaerinus band and seems to die out in the zone of Marsupites. In the zone (restricted) of A. quadratus it is succeeded by

Membraniporella thoraciformis, sp. nov. (PL IX, Figs. 1–3.)

Zoarium unilaminate, incrusting.

Geologists and archæologists are much indebted to Professors Osborn and Obermaier for useful up-to-date summaries of our knowledge of early man, with extensive bibliographies which include most of the latest papers. So much progress has heen made in the study of the subject during recent years—especially since the Prince of Monaco's foundation of the Institute of Human Palæontology in Paris—that synoptical treatises of this kind are an indispensable aid to further advance. Both are also intended, with their beautiful illustrations, to arouse interest in a much wider circle than that of students who are actually engaged in research. They should, indeed, help in urging the educated public to take every opportunity of bringing to the notice of scientific men such casual discoveries of human remains and traces of human handiwork as they happen to meet with. It is lamentable to think how few of these discoveries, even under existing circumstances, are rescued from destruction and made available for study.

Since 1824, when Charles Stokes transmitted to the Geological Society a drawing of the “buccal plates” of Conulus, the question of the existence and characters of the lantern in that genus has been intermittently, but inconclusively, debated. The course of this discussion may be briefly outlined here.

In March, 1912, a short paragraph in one of the London daily papers made the astonishing announcement that several beds of coal had been discovered on the Folly Farm, Presteign, and that boring would be started immediately. The astonishment was due to the fact that on the Geological Survey maps Presteign is represented as surrounded by Silurian and Old Red Sandstone formations, with no rocks of Carboniferous age nearer than the Clee Hills, 20 miles away in Shropshire. Unless, therefore, the Survey maps were wrong, and some unsuspected outlier of Coal-measures had been discovered, the name of the scene of operations was likely to prove prophetic.

Shell oval in shape, very thin, consisting of six whorls, the last one very large and inflated. In some specimens the spire is rather prominent, in others slightly depressed with rather deep sutures. The apex and protoconch when not broken off are pointed and prominent. The aperture is broad in front but narrow behind, and seems to have a faint shallow anterior channel. There is no columellar fold. The outer lip in specimens where it is preserved is sharp and very slightly flattened out and expanded anteriorly. The growth-lines are fairly prominent, and there is a tendency for faint and shallow parallel furrows to develop, especially on the anterior portion. Height about 18 mm.

Zoœcia large and pentagonal, average length about 8 mm., markedly crater-shaped (i.e. with side walls sloping inwards to a deep-lying areal opening): areas sub-pentagonal as a rule : side walls wide, sloping inwards practically all the way from the zooecial margin, the slope gentle in the lower half, then changing gradually to quite steep at the upper end; the two upper corners are occupied by a pair of stumpy perforated tubercles; just below the summit of the steep inward slope at the upper end of the arc, close to the corners and probably communicating with the external tubercles, are two pores so faint as to be hardly visible in full light.

The Pycnodonts were the coral fishes of Mesozoic seas, with a deepened body, produced face, and a small mouth having grasping and grinding teeth, capable of obtaining their hard-shelled food from hollows and crannies. They are evidently not to be regarded as closely allied to any of the typical coral fishes of Tertiary and existing seas, which are spiny-finned teleosteans. They are merely Lepidotus-like and Dapedius-like forms with adaptations to a similar mode of life. The study of their skeleton is therefore of great interest.

The rocks of the New Hebrides belong to at least four groups—two series of limestones and two series of volcanic rocks. The islands are sometimes referred to as if composed only of recent volcanic and coral formations. The existence of a series of old rocks has been believed from the records of gneiss on Espiritu Santo by Levat, and of ores of iron, copper, and nickel. The asserted presence of these materials suggested that the older rocks of New Caledonia form the foundation of the New Hebrides. The existence of the ores and gneiss is, however, discredited by Sir Douglas Mawson (1905, pp. 422, 434–5); he remarked that he had examined “small samples of copper, manganese, and other ores supposed to have been collected in the group” (Mawson, 1905, p. 435). He did not confirm this supposition, though admitting that traces of these metals might occur.

In his account of the volcanoes of Iceland, Thoroddsen describes two types of acid lavas which have been extruded in post-Glacial, prehistoric times. First are the lavas of the Torfajökull district, of the usual nature of acid flows, building up a compact mass of bluish-grey rock with an outer casing of obsidian and pumice. These lavas have been poured out in the post-Tertiary country, but the second type of stream is found most frequently in the older parts of the island, which otherwise have witnessed no volcanic eruptions since Tertiary times. This type of flow results from eruptions of a peculiar character in which “vast outflows of halfmelted and unmelted masses of liparite, poured out from cauldronshaped depressions, stretch down into the lowlands” (1, p. 503). The best example of these “Liparitische Bloekströme” occurs in the Lodmundarfjord district, E. Iceland, and is especially described by Thoroddsen (2, pp. 159–161). In this paper the contention is put forward that the Lodmundarfjord blockstream is not a lava-flow but an unusual type of glacial moraine.

Dr. Alfred Harker was born at Hull, in Yorkshire, on February 19, 1859; his name may thus be appropriately added, as an “eminent geologist”, to the county which claims amongst its sons the name of Sedgwick, the Woodwardian Professor of Geology in the University of Cambridge (1818–73), the first who taught modern geology; and famous as having had such historians as William Smith (the “Father of English Geology”) and his nephew, Professor John Phillips; also as the birthplace of Sorby, Williamson, Strickland, Hudleston, and many others.

For nearly half a century geologists have followed with great interest and admiration the discoveries of fossil vertebrate animals in the west of North America. From the early days when western pioneers brought back scattered fragments for study by Leidy, to the seventies and eighties of last century when Cope and Marsh led or encouraged adventurous expeditions to collect fossils in the territories then occupied by hostile Indians, the continual succession of new forms of extinct reptiles, birds, and mammals met with in an unusual state of preservation, excited increasing attention. So remarkable, indeed, were these finds and so sporting was their pursuit, that rivalries arose and passed beyond the state of friendly emulation which is good for real progress. It was thus fortunate for American palæontology that a younger generation of well-trained enthusiastic students was then ready to enter the field, and especially fortunate that their leaders were imbued with a harmonious spirit of co-operation. Among these leaders was the subject of our present biographical sketch, who has perhaps done most by his personal influence to maintain the happy relations which now exist between all workers in vertebrate palæontology in America.

The controversy which has arisen in recent years in New Zealand regarding the problem of the Pleistocene glaciation of that country resolves itself into the two following main questions:—

1. Was there any glaciation in the North Island?

2. Was there an ice-sheet covering the South Island?

It appears to be still generally supposed that the Ichthyosaurians differed from all modern reptiles in having a short intestine with a spiral valve, like that of the more generalized fishes; and the supposition is rendered all the more plausible by the common belief that some at least of the Labyrinthodonts were similarly characterized. In each case, it is true, coprolites or masses of partially digested food, marked with the line of an intestinal spiral valve, are often found in the same strata as the skeletons; but, so far as I have been able to discover, no instance is known in which the spirally-marked coprolite actually occurs in its natural position in the fossilized animal.

The question of the age of the Maitai Series is one of the most important which concern New Zealand geology, and one which has aroused the greatest controversy and uncertainty. F. von Hochstetter, before any distinctive fossils had been found in these rocks, considered that the “Maitai Series”, which form the hills bounding on the east and south-east the strip of fossiliferous Trias of the Nelson area, were of Triassic age, and underlay the sandstones with Monotis salinaria. In 1873 F. W. Hutton referred the Maitai to the Jurassic on the supposed occurrence of Inoceramus. A. McKay in 1878, during the survey of the Nelson district, found several fossils, obviously of late Palæozoic age, in the Maitai Limestone of the upper part of the lower Wairoa Gorge opposite a place called Martin's Saw-mill. Sir J. Hector identified these as Spirifera bisulcata, Productus brachythærus, Cyathophyllum, and Cyathocrinus. McKay also surveyed and collected from the Maitai slates and argillites at Wooded Peak, on the Dun Mountain Tramway, some five miles east of Nelson. A large bivalve shell having the prismatic structure and general outline and concentric plication of Inoceramus occurs here. McKay, however, in his report adds that “there are material differences between this shell and the ordinary forms of Inoceramus which may warrant its being considered the type of a new genus”.

In a recent paper the writer described structures which he had found in the Frodingham Ironstone of Lincolnshire. The claim that these structures are fossil fungi is one of more than usual interest, for fossil fungi have not hitherto been recorded from the Jurassic rocks, and, further, the decomposition established by this fungus must have been carried out under marine conditions. Since the publication of this paper criticisms as to the conclusions contained in it have not been wanting, and it is proposed in the present paper to deal with these criticisms and further to furnish a few additional data to supplement those that have already been given.

It may interest readers of the Geological Magazine to have a summarized account of the new data obtained regarding the Post-Eocene and Post-Miocene movements in the Gulf of Suez area, and notably in its southern portion, the oilfield region of Egypt (see Map, Fig. 1).

Owing to incomplete palæontological knowledge, the true age and correlation of the various divisions of the great Mesozoic series of New Zealand, which, together with the Maitai Series, forms such an important element in the structure of the country, has long remained a matter of uncertainty. In consequence the idea has to some extent taken hold among New Zealand geologists that the Mesozoic faunas, owing to supposed conditions of isolation, show archaic features. It was explained that certain Permian forms occurred in the Trias and that Trias forms may have persisted into Jurassic times, and to a still greater extent that a Cretaceous fauna lived on in this portion of the earth into the Tertiary period.

Starting with the bed labelled “Bieavea bed” by Rowe, the following generalized section represents the downward sequence in the Isle of Wight.

The conclusions of Lovén as to the composition of the perignathic girdle of D. cylindricus are confirmed in essential particulars, while those of Duncan & Sladen are shown to be based upon imperfectly preserved material. The processes, which may project freely for a varying distance above the rest of the girdle, are slender. The actual ridges are represented, as in Plesiechinus, by the slightly thickened and projecting inner surfaces of the unpaired primordial interambulacral plates. The rest of the interradial portion of the girdle is interpreted as being made of the bevelled edges of the buttresses which radiate over the interambulacra of the adoral surface. These sloping surfaces, here called “false ridges”, are believed to be specialized and somewhat extended as “rests” or “slides” for the inclined pyramids; thus forecasting the articulation between lantern and girdle found in the Clypeastroida. The retractor muscles were attached to the upper parts of the processes, and it is argued that the protractors must have sprung from the small true ridges, the false ridges having no function as muscle supports. In the absence of positive evidence, radial compass muscles are presumed to have been absent.

In 1843 Simpson published a description of a Yorkshire Ammonite previously named Ammonites trivialis in Bean's manuscript. A few years later Quenstedt described a number of small continental Ammonites of similar character as A. polymorphus, which he further divided into the varieties lineatus, costatus, interruptus, mixtus, and quadratus. The specimens he then figured must be taken as his types; in a later work he showed many more examples which he referred to the same species; all these have small, evolute shells, but few other common characters, so that the name polymorphus was fully justified. For example, the illustrations given as Ammonites polymorphus mixtus include forms with round or square whorls, with nearly straight or with curved ribs, which may pass across the venter with or without a forward bend, or may be suppressed entirely on the venter. The specimens figured probably include young examples of several different genera.