Since no undoubted fossil remains of this group of hydroids have been previously recorded, with the exception of possible forms indicated by Ruedemann but placed by him with the Graptolites, it is thought that a few brief notes on a recent discovery in Victoria may be acceptable to readers of this Magazine. A description of the fossils by one of us (F. C.) will appear in the Proc. Roy. Soc. Victoria, while a description of the stratigraphy of the area will be given by the other author (E. W. S.)

During a recent examination of the Carboniferous Limestone in the Dove Dale district I have met with an abundance of Productus humerosus. This species is a common fossil in the cliffs extending for a distance of quite 2 miles from the top end of Nabs Dale to beyond Tissington Spires. It is most prolific at and near Reynard's Cave, where the shells occur in clusters, often cupped into each other.

In 1915 a heavy concentrate of sand from an unknown locality in Siam was submitted to me for identification. The sand consisted of rather coarse grains of a dark mineral, and finer grains of ilmenite, monazite, tourmaline, zircon, and topaz, with some of the same dark mineral as that occurring in coarse grains.

“The Igneous Geology of Carrizo Mountain, Arizona,” by W. B. Emery. Amer. Journ. Sci., vol. xlii, pp. 349–63, 1916.

This region includes various intrusive bodies: sheets, sills, dykes, and a large laccolith of diorite-porphyry. The presence of six volcanic plugs also indicates extrusion, though all flows have been removed by erosion.

When in 1897 Sir Archibald Geikie published his important monograph on the Ancient Volcanoes of Great Britain he devoted chapter xl to a description of Iceland—so largely does our North Atlantic neighbour bulk in the eves of British vulcanologists. Geikie drew the greater part of his informatiom from Thoroddsen's writings, supplemented by those of Helland, Tempest Anderson, and Johnston-Lavis. His theme throughout was the conspicuous and abundant evidence afforded of fissure eruptions.

The Carboniferous Limestone cropping out near Wellington and near Newport in the Wrekin district has hitherto received little attention. One or two references to the Lower Carboniferous rocks of the area are made in Geology in the Field, in which the limestone is referred to the Dibunophyllum zone, and the intrusive material underlying the limestone is described as an olivine-dolerite, probably of Tertiary age. Apart from these references there does not appear to be any published description of the limestone of the district. Although the Lower Carboniferous outcrops in the area are small, the faunal contents, stratigraphical horizon, and petrology of these rocks are subjects of interest in connection with recent work on the Carboniferous Limestone of various Midland districts.

The well-known section alongside the Great Northern Railway just north of Sandy Station shows a total thickness of about 50 feet of ferruginous sands with occasional concretionary ironstone bands, resting on the Oxford Clay. This is therefore the lowest portion of the Lower Greensand. Numerous specimens from different levels in the exposure have been collected and examined, but they were all found to be very similar, and as a matter of fact not very interesting, so that a short description will suffice.

Many unsolved problems still remain in connexion with Devonshire geology, and there is no more interesting area in the county than that surrounding the Dartmoor granite mass. The investigation of this part of Devonshire has not been completed by the Geological Survey, and most of the northern margin of the Moor remains undescribed.1 During 1914, 1915, and 1916 the writer at intervals spent a good deal of time in studying the metamorphosed sediments on the north side of the Moor, and although he left England with his investigations incomplete this brief account of the results obtained will, it is hoped, be of service, if only as an indication of what is to be found.

According to a strict interpretation of the international rules of zoological nomenclature the generic name Spirifer is wrongly used for the group including Anomites striatus, Martin, and should be restricted to the group including Anomites cuspidatus, Martin, i.e. it should replace Syringothyris, Winchell. My object in pointing this out is not to urge a strict interpretation of the international rules in this case, for it would serve no useful purpose to attempt to displace a name which through a century of usage has become the geological equivalent of a household word, but to show the need for geologists to combine with zoologists in demanding a list of nomina conservanda in zoology.

“Structure of the Anorthosite Body in the Adirondacks,” by H. P. Cushing. Journ. Geol., vol. xxv, pp. 501–8, 1917.

A criticism of Dr. Bowen's conclusions as to the field relations of the different rock-types of the area.

At a meeting of the Geological Society on January 22 a section at Little Heath, near Berkhamsted, was described and discussed; but both in the papers and in the discussion attention was focussed on the lower part of the section, and the gravel, which is separated by about 6 inches of bull-head from the Chalk, was assigned to the Pliocene and correlated with the Westleton Beds of Prestwich. But the upper beds have an interest of their own, especially for the archæologist who is acquainted with the work of the late Mr. Worthington Smith; and it seems worth while to point out some striking resemblances to deposits in a line running north-east of the site in question. The Little Heath strata referred to are:—

The general behaviour of the Scandinavian ice-sheet which spread over the North Sea at the climax of the Glacial period is fairly well known. Numerous erratics show that it reached the coast of Yorkshire and the eastern counties of England. Farther north no erratics have been found, but Dr. Jamieson and others have shown that it approached the coast of Aberdeen. Dr. Croll and Drs. Peach and Horne have shown that it forced the Scotch ice flowing eastward from the Moray Firth to turn in a northerly and north-westerly direction across the northern part of Caithness and over the Orkneys. They concluded that ice from the Christiania district must have passed a few miles to the north of the Orkneys. This is well shown in the chart attached to their paper and also in Professor James Geikie's map. The occurrence of a few Scandinavian erratics in the Orkneys would confirm these deductions. The only erratic recorded from Orkney which may be of Scandinavian origin is the Saville boulder described by Professor Heddle, Drs. Peach and Horne, and Dr. J. S. Flett.

Another direction in which the work of the Survey could with advantage be extended is in the execution of deep borings on carefully thought-out schemes by which a maximum of information could be obtained. Both in Holland and Germany borings have been carried out to discover the nature of the older rocks beneath the Secondary and Tertiary strata, and Professor Watts, in his Presidental Address to the Geological Society in 1912 (Proc. Geol. Soc., pp. lxxx–xc), has dwelt on the importance of exploring systematically the region beneath the wide spread of the younger rocks that covers such a great extent of the East and South of England. Professor Boulton, my predecessor in this Chair, has endorsed this appeal, but nothing has been done or is apparently likely to be done in this direction. It seems extraordinary that no co-ordinated effort should have been made to ascertain the character and potentiality of this almost unknown land that lies close beneath our feet and is the continuation of the older rocks of the west and north to which we owe so much of our mineral wealth. It is true that borings have been put down by private enterprise, but, being directed only by the hope of private gain and by rival interests, they have been carried out on no settled plan, and the results and sometimes the very existence of the borings have been kept secret. The natural consequences of this procedure have been the maximum of expense and the minimum of useful information.