When a case is hopeless, there are two recognized ways of ignoring the fact, and yet of appearing to reply to an adversary. One is the legal device commonly known as“ abusing the plaintiff's attorney,‘ the other is the equally familiar method of replying to something that the opposite party did not say. The latter has been preferred by my friend Mr. Howorth in his paper on “The Absence of Glacial Phenomena in large parts of Western Asia and Eastern Europe,” published in the February Number of the Geological Magazine, pp. 54–64, as the following instances will show.

A Mongst the Carboniferous Crinoidea in this Museum an abnormal form of Platycrinus pileatus, Goldf., from the Carboniferous Limestone of Bolland was recently discovered by me whilst cataloguing the collection. This specimen has only four arms and the calyx has suffered a corresponding diminution in the number of its plates. The cup is conical, and when viewed from the base roughly quadrangular: it expands somewhat rapidly so that its greatest diameter is only slightly less than its height.

Several years ago Mr. W. H. Hudleston, Prof. J. F. Blake and myself obtained large quantities of Waldheimia (Zeilleria) Hudlestoni, Walker, from the quarry on the Suffield Heights near Scarborough. I had separated several specimens which appeared to differ from the typical form; on rearranging my collection, I carefully examined them, and found that they were covered with fine strise and also had the characteristic form of the genus TerebratuUna.

The bed in which they occur is described by Hudleston and Blake, Q.J.G.S. vol. xxxiii. p. 331. This quarry has been long noted for the quantity of small sponges, Spongia floriceps, Spongia corallina, etc., which it contains. It is to be noticed that Quenstedt “die Brachiopoden,” p. 224, states that this brachiopod appears to prefer exclusively a spongy layer as its dwelling place.

During late years, by the opening of new sections, fresh information has been obtained of the geology of different parts of the country, and several fine excavations, the result of railway enterprise, have afforded great sections of the Kellaways beds in localities where only conceptions of them previously prevailed. Gaps have been filled up, and the continuity of the beds over extended areas confirmed. The principal revelations come from the Hull and Barnsley, and from the Swindon and Cirencester railways, opened respectively about 1881 and 1883, and the works now in progress in connexion with the widening of the main line at Oakley, near Bedford.

During a recent visit of the Warwickshire Naturalists' and Archifiologists' Field Club to Rugby, a very interesting section was examined at Hill Morton. It consists, for the most part, of brown and light-coloured sands, exposed near the London and North-Western Railway, at least 50 feet thick, often false-bedded, the laminse of deposition being very irregular, interspersed here and there with numerous small pebbles, many of which are sandstone, none very large, though all are more or less rounded, and including much flint. Amongst these were many Lias Gryphaeas (chiefly G. incurva), and some Cretaceous, Oolitic and Liassic pebbles with occasional fossils; but apparently not many ancient rocks, some of which may possibly be Carboniferous.

As one who has for many years made a special study of the lunar surface, and who is thoroughly convinced that the geologist alone can now extricate selenology from the slough in which it has hopelessly stuck fast, I venture very briefly to lay the case before your readers, in the hope that some one will come forward and help us.

The criticisms which appeared in the January and February Numbers of the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, on certain writings of mine, require some reply. It is obvious that when an author ventures in any way to question or remark upon the results of others, he must expect their opposition to his statements. I have to offer a general apology to all authors on whose writings I have ventured to make critical remarks in the “Annals of British Geology,” that I was unable to send them proofs of the articles before publication, as I hope to do in future, as long as the work is continued. In that way misunderstandings would be avoided. However, I must now proceed to business.

Covering a vast extent of the southern portion of Russia in Europe, occurs the sandy clay which is commonly known as Loess, whose origin has given rise to the most varied and conflicting opinions. In the course of a visit to the above country, this deposit struck the writer as well worthy of further study, whilst its connection with the Black Earth invited closer inspection. Its distribution and general characters, as regards the greater part of Western and Central Europe, have been dealt with in a most masterly manner by Baron von Richthofen in his “China,” chap. v.; but at the Russian frontier his description ceases almost abruptly, and he merely mentions that the Dniester and its tributaries appear to have cut their channels through the Loess.

In a letter in the last Number of the GEOLOGICAL MAGAZINE, Mr. Jukes-Browne takes me to task, with some asperity of language, for my views on the true horizon of the Mammoth, You will, I am sure, allow me to reply to him. He speaks of my “looking down from some literary height upon practical geologists in the plain,” and goes on to say that I have “no practical experience as a geologist, and bids me study the facts in the field.”