It would be the safer plan, in considering the remarkable Gravel and Crag deposits which characterize so distinctly the Quaternary Period, to infer the size of rivers, amount of rainfall, and elevation of tides from the deposits themselves. Further acquaintance with meteorological phenomena may find a fitting explanation of the difficulties we meet with in explaining the position of the gravel at such heights above our present streams, and fresh-water, alternating with marine clay, and sands at such depths below the sea-level.

In the March number of the Geological Magazine, Mr. A. H. Green observes that it is difficult to account for the supply of salts to the Permian Sea. For the iron, he calls in the aid of mineral springs produced by volcanic action; but for the lime and magnesia, streams flowing into the sea holding in solution bicarbonate of lime and sulphate of magnesia.

I Have had the pleasure of reading Mr. Bonney's paper, “On a Cirque at Skye,” and send you these few lines rather as an appendage to it than in the spirit of criticism. I think Mr. Bonney has made out the greater part of his case very well; but being a rather more “ardent glacialist” than he (though far less acquainted with glaciers), I do not think he has attributed quite enough to their operation in the formation of a cirque. Speaking of a Glacial period, he says, “The cliffs would still be cut back, by water in summer, by frost in winter; the talus borne away or crushed by the glacier, the rocks below somewhat worn and rounded, but still the completeness of the Cirque as a whole forbids us—unless we assign it entirely to glacial action—to suppose that it was more than slightly altered by this.”

The method now adopted of working the lenticular deposits of pyrites occurring in the province of Huelva by open cutting and quarrying, is favourable to the examination of these singular masses of mineral. The latter run parallel with the strike of the beds; they are generally, but not always, in close proximity to greenstone, the greenstone often forming one wall or sahlband; they usually, but not always, decrease in width as they go down, and sometimes end in a boat form; they are generally, but not always, marked by oxidation on the surface, and generally, but not always, by a depression between the two walls. The latter phenomena, have been supposed to have been occasioned by the ancient mining for copper having worked away the upper surfaces and exposed fragments of mineral to oxidation; but the facts appear to be at variance with the causes thus assigned, inasmuch as there is extensive colouration where there have been no workings; and on the other hand, no subsidence in many cases where ancient workings exist.

The writer had the opportunity last summer, with Dr. B. J. Harrington as assistant, to re-examine the rock formations of Prince Edward Island, of which a notice was given in the second edition of his “Acadian Geology.” The report of our reconnaissance, which has been published by the local government, with a map, sections, and figures of fossils, may be referred to for details; but I propose in this paper to notice a few points of general scientific interest not dwelt on in the report.

In my first paper I gave the sequence of the Scottish Drift under three groups; but in order to compare these deposits more satisfactorily with the drifts of other countries, it is necessary to subdivide them more closely.

In the fourth number1 of the Proceedings of the Geological Society of Stockholm, there is a paper by Mr. Törnebohm, of the Geological Survey of Sweden, which treats of the origin of the famous åasar,—the same geologist has also kindly sent me some further explanation of his views,—a short account of which will, no doubt, be interesting to many readers of the Magazine.

Paragraphs have appeared in several papers announcing more or less distinctly the discovery of fossils in the Crag which bear upon them marks of human work. Having had considerable opportunities of looking into this question, I venture to offer some reasons for believing that there is not the slightest evidence for attributing the phenomena in question to the agency of man.

In a paper on “The Permian Beds of Yorkshire”, Mr. Lucas maintains: 1st, that the present western edge of the Magnesian Limestone, at all events to the north of Ripon, marks the old shoreline; 2nd, that the iron and other salts found in Permian deposits were derived from the neighbouring grit and limestone land; 3rd, that the colouring-matter, as it was brought down, stained the rocks forming the bed of the inland sea, and hence the purple and red colour of the grit and other beds between Knaresborough and Leeds.

The genus Endoceras was proposed by Hall (Pal. N. York, vol. i., p. 58) for a group of Orihocerata; having “a large siphunele, mostly lateral or excentric, marked or ridged on the outer surface by the septa, which, from their oblique direction, give it the appearance of a tube with spiral lines. Within this siphunele are one or more very elongated eonical tubes, often one within the other to the number of four or five.” The leading point, then, in the definition of Endoceras is the possession of a multiple siphunele, composed of two or more concentric tubes placed one within the other, each tube having the form of an elongated cone.

III. Pictet converted D’Orbigny's families into tribes, and introduced some additional genera created by Giebel King, etc.; and, except in the description of new genera and species by Reuss, Roemer, Salter, Eichwald and others, the subject remained very much where D’Orbigny left it until M. de Fromentelle proposed a new arrangement, based upon what he terms the “organs which serve for the nutrition of the sponge,”—viz., the tubule, oscules, pores, etc. Like D’Orbigny, he divides the sponges into two orders: 1st, the Spongitaria, which comprises only recent genera; and, 2nd, the Spongitaria, which contains all the fossil genera, with the exception of the doubtful group, the Clionidæ. The second order is further divided into three sub-orders: 1, those sponges which have one or more tubules (the Spongitaria tubulosa); 2, those that have oscules, but no tubule (Spongitaria osculata); and 3, those that have neither tubule nor oscules (Spongitaria porosa). Each of these suborders is further divided thus: the tubular sponges into those in which the tubule is solitary, and those in which it is grouped, and also into those with oscules and those without oscules. The oscular sponges are similarly subdivided, according to form, disposition of the oscules, and presence or absence of an epitheca. Lastly, the porous sponges are divided into those that are more or less regularly cup-shaped, and those that assume some other form.

The genera named in the title constitute in our opinion a new I family belonging to the helictobrachial section of the class Palliobranchiata or Brachiopoda. We propose to designate it Trimerellidœ, after the type genus.

In his excellent paper on New Scottish Graptolites, published in the last monthly part of the GeologicalMagazine, Mr. John Hopkinson incidentally refers to the various opinions that have been held by different geologists concerning the thickness and geological age of the carbonaceous Graptolite-bearing shales of South Scotland. He expresses his conviction, derived from a study of the fossils they afford, that there is but “a single band of Graptolite shale, which runs through the Llandeilo beds of South Scotland, there being in this band several distinct zones, each marked by a different assemblage of fossils, but with many species in common.”

It has been generally assumed by geologists that the climate of the period which followed the elevation of the Glacial beds was one of gradual amelioration from a rigorous to a mild one. The Rev. O. Fisher some time since, however, in describing certain appearances presented by some superficial sections which he denominated “Trail,” suggested that they were due to a second period of cold, which he regarded as having occurred between 100,000 and 200,000 years back. Without adopting, in all respects, the views of Mr. Fisher, I yet think that the facts, as far as yet known, point to the conditions of climate during the Post-glacial period having been the reverse of what has been generally assumed with respect to them; and I propose here to give some reasons for that idea.

In this communication I purpose describing a few new forms of Graptolites which I have obtained at various times from the Llandeilo rocks of the south of Scotland. Of one species, first collected at Moffat in 1866, a brief diagnosis has previously been given, and the names of two others, from the lead-mining district of Lanarkshire, have already been published. One of these also occurs near Moffat. The remaining species are all from one or other of these richly fossiliferous districts. Of their position in the geological series I need only say here that the black, more or less carbonaceous, shale in which they occur, appears, from the fossils it contains, to correspond to the higher portion of the Llandeilo flags of Wales; that it is almost immediately succeeded by a series of beds (the Gala group) containing fossils of Caradoc or Bala age; and that the unfossiliferous flagstone, or greywacké, in which it occurs, reposes on rocks which have yielded to the persevering search of Prof. Elliot and Messrs. Lapworth and Wilson a few fossils of Cambrian age.

A Discussion on the geological features of a locality between one who has never been on the spot and another who has seen so little of it as not even to know which is the bottom or top of an elaborate section which he has designed to illustrate these very features, is not likely to prove particularly instructive to the geological public, and for these reasons I would gladly have avoided it, had not Mr. Green thought proper to bring my name prominently forward in a paper entitled “Notes on the Geology of part of Co. Donegal,” in last month's GeologicalMagazine; which paper, it' may be remarked, was read and discussed on the 20th June last at the meeting of the Geological Society, although the Society subsequently declined to print it in the Quarterly Journal.

I.Introduction.—It has been said, with some degree of truth, that our knowledge of the lower forms of life has advanced pari passu with the improvements in the construction of microscopes; and no doubt very considerable progress has been made in some departments of investigation within the last few years. In the vegetable kingdom more especially has this been the case; and with respect to animals, the structure of the Protozoa has been especially elucidated by able observers, the Spongiadee chiefly by the labours of Dr. Bowerbaak.

The very fine series of fossil footprints which, at my request, Principal Dawson has kindly examined and described in the accompanying note, were discovered last summer, in Nova Scotia, under the following circumstances.

Without occupying valuable space with introductory remarks, I would begin with a description and attempted explanation of the drifts along the coast of Rhos Bay, or what is now generally called Colwyn Bay. Well-sinkings, clay and gravel pits, and coast sections, very clearly reveal a quadripartite arrangement of drifts similar to what may be seen in Cumberland. A recent well-boring at Old Colwyn went through loose gravel 9 feet; brown clay, 33 feet; and was stopped in blue clay. In Mr. Pender's brickfield, west of the Station, the pit-section and a well-boring have revealed red brick clay nearly 20 feet; sand and a little fine gravel, 16 feet; boring drill stuck fast under 60 feet of blue clay. In the ballast-pit close to the Railway Station, 30 or 40 feet of sand and gravel lie under a thin covering of red clay, the former (according to Mr. Darbishire, though this I overlooked) being underlaid by brown clay; and the sand rises up from beneath the red clay at a spot south of the road between New Colwyn and Mr. Pender's brickfield.

The interesting relation between the Porphyrite of Whitberry Point, at the mouth of the Tyne near Dunbar, and the adjacent sedimentary rocks, was first noticed, we believe, by Professor Geikie, who speaks of it in the Memoirs of the Geological Survey of East Lothian, pages 40 and 41, and again in the new edition of Jukes's Geology, pp. 269. The volcanic mass which forms the point, consists of a dark felspathic base with numerous crystals of augite: it is circular in form, and is exposed for two-thirds of its circumference in a vertical precipice facing the sea, about twenty feet in height.