Thomas George Bonney was born July 27th, 1833, at Rugeley, Staffordshire. His family is of Huguenot origin, and thus affords yet another instance of the remarkable intellectual enrichment of our country which resulted from the religious persecutions in France. His father, the Rev. Thomas Bonney, son of the Rev. George Bonney, vicar of Sandon, and sometime Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, was a man of wide and varied interests, and a hard worker, in spite of feeble health; he was master of the Grammar School, Rugeley, and for many years ‘perpetual curate’ of Pipe Ridware, a very small parish about five miles from Rugeley. The church was rebuilt through his efforts, and he took great interest in primary education, acting for some time informally as Inspector of Schools in the Diocese. He married a daughter of Edward Smith, a Staffordshire man of independent means, and died in 1853, leaving a widow and ten children, of whom Professor Bonney, then just entering upon his second year at Cambridge, was the eldest. The family inherited some property, but the income it afforded was small for the education of so many.

[Introductory Note.—After the publication of my paper on the Sarsens, or Sarsen Stones, in the Wiltshire Archæological and Natural History Society's Magazine, vol. xxiii (1886), pp. 122–154, many friendly communications gave me further information on the subject, and additional references to published facts and opinions. From this correspondence, and my own notes made in the country, I propose to utilize much that seems to be of interest. The most important of these additions to our knowledge of the Sarsens is the following memoir on their constitution and structure by my friend Prof. Dr. J. W. Judd, C.B., F.R.S., etc., of the Royal College of Science, who most obligingly examined with care the microscopical structure of many specimens from authenticated localities. With his kind permission this valuable communication (dated March 9th, 1888) is here printed.—T. RupertJones.]

When Darwin stated in the first edition of the “Descent of Man,” “as probable that horns of all kinds, even when they are equally developed in the two sexes, were primarily acquired by the male in order to conquer other males, and have been transferred more or less completely to the female,” the “various facts” from which he drew this inference did not include any palæontological evidence. At the present day we are familiar with the notion that, as regards the deer family, the oldest members known, from the Oligocene, were absolutely devoid of antlers, and that the subsequent phylogenetic evolution of the latter has a close parallel in their ontogenetic development.

The specimens described below were collected by my friend Mr. J. G. Hamling, F.G.S., and kindly placed by him in my hands for description. Being casts and often much obscured by injury and distortion, their identification must be in a degree problematical, but for the most part they seem to agree with German species of the Upper Coblenzien age.

The effect of the natural sand-blast of the desert in eroding soft and hard rock has long been known, and attracted much attention, but I cannot call to mind any account of the effect of blowing sand impinging upon wood.

In the year 1865 I noticed the occurrence of what appeared to be a sessile Cirripede from the Upper Chalk of Norwich, and referred it to Leach's genus Pyrgoma. For this unique example the name of Pyrgoma cretacea was then proposed, and afterwards, in 1868, it was more fully described and figured by me in the GeologicalMagazine. I also pointed out that Charles Darwin, in his Monograph on the Fossil Cirrepedia, had described a fossil form belonging to this genus under the name of Pyrgoma anglicum, from the Coralline Crag of Ramsholt, Suffolk, a species found living off the south coast of England and of Ireland, Sicily, Madeira, Cape de Verde Islands, etc.; while Michelotti had named, but not described, a species (Pyrgoma undata) from the North Italian Tertiary strata.

The search for small vertebrates in deposits of Pleistocene age has, within the last few years, been prosecuted with much zeal by several workers, and has brought to light the remains of many species of mammals, as well as birds, reptiles, and amphibia; the bones in some instances occurring in great numbers. The remains of fishes, however, have but rarely been found with the bones of other vertebrata, and never in any abundance. Some interesting discoveries of fish-remains have nevertheless been made; but the records of them are scattered through various publications, and it seems very desirable to bring all this information together.

The origin of Man remains an unsolved problem. In spite of very keen and anxious researches, extending over many years, we are still without a real clue to the difficulty. Whence and how and when he came we do not know, and we had better say so.

In December last M. J. Tolmatschow, Conservator of Geology in the Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, sent for my examination a quantity of two fossiliferous shales from the (Upper ?) Coal - measures in the Basin of Kousnetzk, thinking that specimens of Estheria might be found in them.

For several years careful study has been given to numerous lake basins in England and elsewhere, with the result that many previously considered as rock basins have not survived the ordeal. Professor Bonney, who has always opposed this hypothesis in the case of large lakes, has described four authentic examples from the Lepontine Alps, three of which I had the advantage of visiting with him; and some few weeks before, Mr. Brend described others from Caernarvonshire.

Charles lapworth was born in 1842 at Faringdon, in Berkshire. Five years afterwards his parents removed to Lower Newton, one of the farms rented by his grandfather. He attended the country school at Buckland village, about two miles off, and the vicar of the parish, the Rev. Joseph Moore, finding him an omnivorous reader, generously lent him books from his own library and practically directed his early education. At the age of 15 he became a pupil teacher in the school, and in the year 1862 entered the Training College at Culham, near Oxford, passing out thence in 1864 with a first-class Government certificate. Of the posts as schoolmaster which were then offered him he selected that connected with the Episcopal Church at Galashiels, because it would give him a home and work in the fascinating borderland of Sir Walter Scott. This post he retained for eleven years, and was married in 1869 to the daughter of Mr. Walter Sanderson.

At the suggestion of the British Minister at Athens, Sir Edwin H. Egerton, K.C.B., the Trustees of the British Museum recently undertook a series of excavations in the well-known bone-beds of Pikermi, in Attica, and I was honoured by being entrusted with the supervision of the work. The owner of the estate, Mr. Alexander Skousés, former Minister of War, most cordially assented, and gave every possible facility for the undertaking; while Sir Edwin Egerton's unflagging interest and zeal combined to ensure the greatest success. My wife and I went into residence at the farm of Pikermi early in April, and we continued to occupy the simple but comfortable room which Mr. Skousés had kindly placed at our disposal, until the cessation of digging in the middle of July. During much of the time we were accompanied by Dr. Theodore Skouphos, Conservator of the Geological Museum in the University of Athens, which claims some share of the results of all such excavations made in Greece. We have to thank him for much help in dealing with the workmen, who spoke only a language with which I was at first unfamiliar.

The Fayûm, one of the largest depressions of the Libyan Desert, is situated some 50 miles south-west of Cairo. It is cut out in rocks of Eocene and Oligocene age, while still younger deposits of Pliocene and Post-Pliocene date are found within the hollow. The depression owes its origin to the action of the ordinary subærial denuding agents, which I have shown in previous papers were capable of producing the oases-depressions of Baharia, Farafra, Dakhla, etc. Faulting, which has played so important a part in the formation of the Nile Valley, appears to have had little or nothing to do with the production of the Fayûm and other depressions of the Libyan Desert.

It is, I regret to say, some long time since my friend Miss Caroline Birley placed in my hands the series of Crustacea which she had, with the assistance of Miss L. Copland, collected from the Upper Cretaceous of Faxe, Denmark.

In 1899 Messrs. Rupert Jones and Henry Woodward stated that Belinurus “has not at present been found in rocks of earlier age than the Coal-measures.” Belinurus grandœvus, described in the same paper, was referred, with probability, to the Lower Carboniferous. A writer (“ R. W. E.”) in the Ottawa Naturalist for January, 1900, thereupon called attention to the record of Belinurus from the Kiltorcan Beds of Ireland. This record is founded on Mr. W. H.

The bones of Pleistocene mammals and birds, a list of some of which is given below, were found in a small cave in an outlying part of the Forest of Dean, close to the river Wye, where it is flanked by steep and wooded hills that rise abruptly from either bank. At short intervals along the sides of these hills limestone cliffs and boulders stand out bare and white among the surrounding trees. The slopes below are strewn, and in places completely covered, with pieces of rock of all sizes that are continually becoming loosened and fall from the outstanding crags above, in which are numerous cracks, holes, and caves, the last, as a rule, being only of small size.

When searching for traces of the dermal structure preserved in the specimen of Hyperodapedon in the British Museum (Natural History) in London, my attention was drawn to certain spots where the matrix showed projections and pits of a polygonal shape, which I detected when I took the photographs of this Triassic reptile. Primarily occupying myself with the matrix of the principal slab, in which the skeleton is enclosed, I quite thought I had only to deal with dermal structures similar to those discovered in Rhynchosaurus.

During a recent visit to Egypt, through the kindness of Captain H. G. Lyons, Director-General of the Egyptian Survey, I have on several occasions had opportunities of accompanying members of the Staff of the Geological Survey on collecting expeditions into the Western Desert.

The problems of life which the biologist is called upon to solve present so many and such varied aspects that they are never likely to become exhausted, or to weary by reason of their monotony. Among these the appearances and disappearances of groups in time (like the players on Shakespeare's mimic stage) are certainly not the least interesting questions awaiting solution.

The present nomenclature of igneous rocks is generally acknowledged to be unsatisfactory, for not only is it without useful meaning, but it is also so unsystematic that it forms a severe tax upon the memory. The manifest and urgent need of reform, which these circumstances create, must be my excuse for presenting in a short note a suggestion likely to require much elaboration. A systematic nomenclature, I need hardly say, can only rest upon a systematic classification, so that the proposals I shall herewith make would have been fitly accompanied by an attempt at producing a classification of the kind. As I have found, however, that much expenditure of time and labour will be necessary to accomplish this task, I have decided upon publishing at once certain proposals with regard to nomenclature, which could be largely applied to classifications at present in use.