Last February, while working in the Chemical Laboratory of University College, London, I had occasion to make some sulphanilic acid. This was done in the usual way by heating a mixture of 100 grammes of concentrated sulphuric acid and 30 grammes of aniline to 180°–190° C. in an oil bath for four hours. The flask containing the mixture was left in the oil bath to cool, and on examining it the next day I was surprised to find that the solid mass inside had developed a beautiful spherulitic structure. As I believe this has never been observed before, it may be worth a description.

The paper under consideration deals briefly with the geological features of Eastern Sinai, and more especially with the characters of the sedimentary rocks developed in that region, a short note on the igneous rocks being also appended.

On both sides of the Klip River running through this district a shale predominates, varying in colour from greyish-brown to purple, having a conchoidal fracture, and the features of Ecca Shale, as described by Dr. Molengraaf (Trans. Geol. Soc. South Africa, vol. iv, pt. 5, pp. 107–112).

In 1856 Sharpe founded the species Ammonites Ramsayanus upon a single deformed specimen (in the collection of J. Wiest, Esq.) that was obtained from the “Chalk with silicious grains, at Chardstock, Somersetshire.”

In the Geological Magazine for August I gave the major limit to the period of time we can assign to the geological age of the Earth by the solvent-denudation method, when it is assumed that all the chlorine of rivers is derived directly from the ocean, and that all such chlorine (falling, as assumed, in rain) carries its full complement of sodium from the ocean. The major limit with these assumptions is 141 million years. A second estimate is given on the more moderate assumption that one-third the amount of chlorine in rivers is derived from the sea and brings with it its full equivalent of sodium; this affords 105 millions of years as the age. Finally, there is the original estimate based on a 10 per cent. deduction from the chlorine of rivers as rain-borne, affording 96 millions of years.

Some three years ago, on referring to the twenty-fifth volume of the “Beiträge zur Geologischen Karte der Schweiz,” I found Professor Heim had devoted a few pages (pp. 316–319) of that work to my criticisms of his attempts to prove that Jurassic rocks had been metamorphosed into schists containing authigenous garnets, staurolites, etc. Had he brought forward any new fact of importance or pointed out any serious error in my work I should have replied at once, but as he was unable to do this, and as the justice of one of my criticisms was indirectly admitted in the petrographical appendix by Dr. C. Schmidt, I allowed more pressing and interesting matters to take precedence of one which had become chiefly personal.

In “The Geology of the Isle of Purbeck and Weymouth” (p. 152) I referred to some green sand which occurs next below the Chalk in Mupe Bay, Dorset, as somewhat resembling Chloritio Marl, but as being too thick for that bed. As it was followed by the Gault, I concluded that it belonged to the Upper Greensand. The section was subsequently visited by Mr. W. Hill, who collected from the sand in question Holaster subglobosus, var. altus, and Echinoconus castanea among other fossils, and inferred that it was Chloritic Marl. He considered that though it passed up inseusibly into the Chalk it was faulted against the Gault, but that there had been also considerable contemporaneous erosion of the Upper Greensand. In April of this year I revisited the section in company with Mr. Hill, and was fully satisfied as to the correctness of his views. The following account has been drawn up from our observations:—

The Lower Chalk becomes extremely impure in its lower part, and contains much glauconite; it thus graduates insensibly downwards into a gritty glauconitic sand. The sand contains a few phosphatic casts, more or less worn or corroded, scattered throughout it, but has a well-marked nodule-bed crowded with these casts at its base; other fossils with the shell preserved and not filled in with phosphate occur also throughout the whole bed.

Not much has as yet been done in the way of cataloguing the fossil fishes of the Lower Carboniferous rocks of Eastern Fifeshire. A few species and localities were noted by the late Rev. Thomas Brown in 1860 and by Mr. Kirkby in 1880, and the late Mr. Robert Walker published a paper in 1872 in which he described what he supposed to be a new species of Amblypterus (A. anconoœchmodus) from the Oil-shale works at Pitcorthy, near Anstruther. In this paper Mr. Walker drew attention to the abundance and variety of fish-remains in the oil-shale and ironstone worked at that locality, promising to describe them in detail afterwards—a promise which he was never able to fulfil. After his death in 1881, his important collection of fish-remains from this and other localities in East Fife was acquired by the Edinburgh Museum, and largely forms the basis of the present list. I myself have also done some collecting in this region; and a good many years ago the Museum acquired a number of specimens collected by Mr. W. T. Kinnear at Ardross, some of which are of great interest.

There are two specimens of this species in the Woodwardian Museum, both of which were named and labelled by Salter. The smaller and more perfect one, a 987 (Fletcher Collection), is first mentioned, and is stated to have come from the Lower Ludlow of Dudley. The larger specimen is from the same horizon of Green Quarry, Leintwardine, and shows only a portion of the upper surface.

When man first began the study of the earth's surface, he encountered at the very beginning, along the borders of the sea-coasts, on the lowland plains, and even on the hills, certain puzzling phenomena, difficult of explanation. These perplexing observations seemed to testify, by means of ancient raised beaches, fossil oyster and mussel shells, dessicated salt marshes, fragments of wrecks, and even by ancient anchors in the hills, that at some unknown time in the past the sea had “formerly been where the land now was.”

The rarity of insect remains from the Carboniferous rocks of the British Isles is demonstrated by the small number of genera and species included in the lists published by such authorities as Dr. Henry Woodward and Mr. S. H. Scudder. A portion of a wing, with a neuration unlike that of any specimen yet described, having recently been exhumed, it may be deemed not unworthy of notice.

I.—Specimen from one of the blocks lying on the Ecca Shale on the declivity near the Klip River at the Station Hospital, Ladysmith. This is a bluish-grey rock of close texture, with a flaky and sometimes conchoidal fracture. The broken surface does not reveal the rock's internal structure; but on the weathered surface, which appears as a brown crust, the siliceous strings and bands passing through the rock stand out in high relief. The surface effervesces freely when touched with acid.

Norwich, England, is represented as situated on the banks of an arm of the sea even in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (Lyell's “Principles,” 11th ed., vol. i, p. 521; S. Woodward). Early in the fourteenth century Pagham Harbour was formed by a sudden inroad of the sea (Encyc. Brit, vol. xxii, p. 723).

In 1884 I described in the GeologicalMagazine a section of Keuper Marls exposed by the excavation of the Boulder-clay at Moorhey, Great Crosby. This was our first knowledge of their existence in the neighbourhood, the whole area being covered with a thick mantle of Boulder-clay excepting where the Lower Keuper Sandstone comes to the surface in the villages of Great and Little Crosby.

[In a recently published paper Dr. N. O. Holst, of the Geological Survey of Sweden, has given a detailed description of the Post-Glacial deposits of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Bothnia. The paper is accompanied by a map showing the chief points of observation. The determination of the different horizons depends on (1) the stratigraphy; (2) the sub-fossil diatomaceous flora; (3) the sub-fossil higher flora. The stratigraphical evidence is in the form of numerous sections, taken all along the coast. The diatoms are used chiefly, but not solely, to distinguish the marine from the fresh-water deposits; their determinations, nearly 3,000 in number, are due to Professor P. T. Cleve and his daughter, Dr. Astrid Cleve. The remains of the higher plants have been determined by Dr. Gunnar Andersson.

About ten years ago, when studying the drifts of East Yorkshire, Mr. G. W. Lamplugh counted and roughly classified the larger boulders of Flamborough Head and other selected localities on the coast. This work has been continued by members of the Hull Geological Society, who have up to the present time recorded nearly four thousand boulders, of twelve inches and upwards in diameter. To avoid possible error, arising from the moving beach and other causes, only the boulders actually in place in the clay were noted, or such as had obviously recently fallen from the cliffs. The whole of the coastline from Spurn to Flamborough has been surveyed in this way, and also portions of the coast north of Flamborough as far as Saltburn. The lists thus prepared have been published from time to time by the Hull Geological Society and by the Erratic Blocks Committee of the British Association.

This communication is the outcome of work carried out during the years 1895–1901 in the service of the Geological Survey of Scotland. Although this systematic work has been confined to the Isle of Skye, information incidentally acquired, and the published literature of the British Tertiary rocks, indicate for the conclusions arrived at a much wider application. In this place the results must be set down without the detailed observations upon which they are based.

II. (8) Kent.—1862. Mr. W. H. Bensted, in the Geologist, vol. v (1862), pp. 449, 450, states: “The Druid Sandstone, of which Kit's Coty House, Stonehenge, and many other Druidical remains are composed, is found scattered in great blocks over the surface of the Chalk Hills, or buried superficially in beds of clay retained in the hollows on the summits of the escarpments.” These stones, he added, are the same as the Greywethers of Berks and Wilts; and are occasionally pebbly, like the Hertfordshire Puddingstones.